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WILLIAM BURKE 



THE AUTHOR OF JUNIUS; 



Itt iinuvi n liis £xl 



BY JELIi^GEE COOKSOJS" SYMONS, 

/f 

BAERISTEE AT LAW, ETC. 



LONDON : 

SMITH, ELDEE AND CO., 65, COEXHILL. 

MDCCCLIX. 






GLOUCESTER : 

PRINTED AT A. LEA'S OFFICES, 

WESTGATE STREET. 



\ 



CO]^TE]S^TS. 



I. PAGE, 

IXTRODUCTIOX - - -- - - - - " 1 

II. 

EDMUND BURKE SUSPECTED OF BEING .JUNIUS - - - 7 

III. 
EDMUND burke' S DENIALS -12 

lY. 

ALLEGED ANTAGONISM OF EDMUND BURKE AND JUNIUS DISPROVED 15 

V. 

THE STATE OF PARTIES, 1766-7 ------ 18 

VI. 
O^-ERTURES TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND THE MAE^QUIS OF 

ROCKINGHAM IN 1 7 6 7 . — LORD BUTE. — ^LORD CHATHAM. CONWAY . 29 

VII. 
GEORGE GREN^'ILLE. — THE BURKES AND JUNIUS. — HIS PRIVATE 

LETTERS TO GRENVILLE - -33 

VIII. 
LORD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE BURKES - - - - 43 

IX. 

ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LORD HILLSBOROUGH. — AVALPOLE'S TESTI- 
MONY THAT WILLIAM BURKE WAS THE ASSAILER - - 53 

X. 

THE ''nullum TEMPUS " ACT ------ 56 



17 CONTENTS. 

XL 
DR. HAY CONFIDES TO WILLIAM BURKE THE MINISTERL\L TACTICS 

OF 1768. — ^JUNIUS ON THE AMERICAN QUESTION _ - _ 61 

XII. 

JUNIUS' S PUBLIC LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON, DRAPER, 

THE DUKE OF BEDFORD, THE KING, ETC. - - - - 67 

XIII. 

THE LATER LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 82 

XIV. 

ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LORD MANSFIELD - - - - 95 

XV. 

THE STOCK JOBBING OF WILLIAM BURKE - - - - 99 

XVI. 

A PLEA FOR THE PERSONALITIES OF JUNIUS - - - - 102 

XVII. 

THE GREAT PRINCIPLES ADVOCATED BY JUNIUS - - - 108 

XVIII. 

DIVERS SMALL PROOFS 113 

XIX. 

THE CASE FOR FRANCIS, AND OTHERS - - - - - 12o 

XX. 

STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION - - - - - 134 



• A new knight entered the lists with his visor down, and with unreal devices on liLs shield, 
but whose ami was uerv-ed with inborn Aigor, and whose lance was poised with most 
malignant skill. Even now the dark shadow of Juniiis looms across that dark period of 
our annals with a grandeur no doubt much enhanced and heightened by the mystery. 
To soh'e that mysterj' has since employed the most patient industry, and aroused the 
most varied conjectures; and a full statement at least, if not a full solution of it, may 
justly be required from the historian of that time."— Lord Mahon. 




I. 

INTEODUCTION. 

^EW people have heard of William Burke. They only, 
seem to be aware that he ever existed, who have 
read the details of the early part of the reign of 
George III., or who happen to have explored the 
interesting works in which Lord Fitzwilliam, Mr. 
Macknight and others have shed new light on the 
personal history of Edmund Burke. 

Nevertheless "William Burke sat in Parliament for Bed- 
win from the beginningof 1766 till 17 74, when he unsuccess- 
fully contested Haslemere. Erom 1 765 until Eebruary, 1 767, 
he was Under Secretary of State, attached to General Conway, 
remaining in office after the fall of the Eockingham Ministry. 
Ten years later he went to Madras and prosecuted the in- 
terests of the Eajah of Tanjore '^with great earnestness 
and some success, both with the British Ministers and the 
Board of East India Directors.'' So says Lord Fitzwilliam. 
(ii. Correspondence, 179.) He was afterwards Deputy Pay- 
master General to the King's troops in India, accompanying 

B 



Z TNTROBUCTIOX. 

Lord Cornwallis by whom he seems to have been much be- 
loved. He thus went twice to India. The second time in 
1 779, returning in 1 793. He died in 1 798. But of far more 
historical interest is the fact that to William Burke's unex- 
plained influence with Lord Verney, Edmund Burke owed his 
first seat in Parliament, that William Burke first introduced 
him to Lord Eockingham, and that he was the ^^Jidus Achates'' 
of the great man through life, and in no slight degree the 
minister of his fortunes. Though William Burke took his 
part in the debates, his talents shone in less overt spheres. 
His political influence was great, but his power as a writer 
was of the first order. 

T think I can prove that he was the author of Junius. 

I shall proceed to do so by a series of circumstantial evi- 
dence which it has cost me much time and labor to collate, 
and which I propose to present to the patient judgment of 
those who still take an interest in the solution of this long- 
lived enigma, just as I should lay it before a jury. Por 
it has been well remarked by the ^'Quarterly Review" that *4f 
ever solved, it must be solved not by a mere efibrt of the 
intellect, like a mathematical problem, but by the evidence 
of facts, in much the same manner as questions of guilt or 
innocence are determined in our Courts of Law." 

Mr. Macknight's ''Life and Times of Edmund Burke " 
contains many morceaux which disclose the career of William, 
and rescue it from much of that obscurity about him, which 
Mr. Macknight says that ''all the eff'orts of biographers and 
critics have not succeeded in penetrating." That William 
Burke was a relative of Edmund Burke there seems no reason 
to disbelieve. He is spoken of frequently by Edmund Burke 
as his kinsman, and once as his cousin, in the Correspondence 
edited bv the late Lord Fitzwilliam. A furor for the 



INTHODUCTIOX. 3 

romance of family mystery can alone account for further in- 
credulity on the relation between these men. They were, 
from the first arrival of Edmund Burke from Ireland, com- 
panions and bosom friends. Burke speaks of him thus to 
Sir P. Francis when he goes to seek his fortune in India in 
1777. ^^ Indemnify me, my dear Sir, as well as you can for 
his loss, by contributing to the fortune of my friend whom I 
have tenderly loved, highly valued, and continually lived 
withy in an union not to be expressed, quite since our boyish 
years.'' (i. Macknight's Life, p. 178.) 

When Edmund writes to him in April, 1782, he uses these 
remarkable words: — ^'Oh! my dearest, oldest, best friend; 
you are far off indeed : may God of his infinite mercy 
preserve you. Your enemies — your cruel and unprovoked 
persecutors — are on the ground, suffering the punishment, 
not of their villany towards you, but of their other crimes 
which are innumerable.'' (ii. Correspondence, 484.) 

He is thus spoken of by Horace Walpole : — 

"William Burke, the cousin of Edmund, wrote with ingenuity and 
sharpness ; and both of them were serviceable to the new administra- 
tion, by party papers. But WiUiam, as an orator, had neither manner, 
nor talents, and yet wanted Httle of his cousin's presumption.'* 
(Memoirs of George III., ii. 274.) 

Sir Denis Le Marchant, the very careful and able editor 
of these Memoirs, adds in a note that '^"WiUiam shared 
his brother's fortunes, and lived with him on terms of 
most intimate friendship. When the prospects of the "Whigs 
seemed to be hopeless, he went to India, and through the 
help of Mr. Erancis, obtained some lucrative offices. He was 
a person of great accomplishments." Added to this, he per- 
fectly realized the type of a busy, restless man, moving about 
in each grade of society, and especially in political spheres, 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

in restless quest of information and material for the use of 
his party, and especially for the ear of his cousin. There 
are proofs of this in several of Edmund Eurke's private 
letters to Lord Eockingham, and others, written on the 
spur of the moment, retailing the news of the day, (certainly 
never designed for publication,) and derived avowedly from 
William. Wor was this all. Edmund Burke's younger 
brother Richard, though never in Parliament, lived with Ed- 
mund and William during the greater part of the Junius era. 
Now Eichard was renowned for all that bonhommie, easy 
wit and humour, which gave then, as now, an entree into 
every circle in London. Goldsmith thus sketched him : — 

" What spirits were his ! what wit, and what whim ! 
Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb. 
Now wranghng and grumbliQg, to keep up the ball ; 
Now teazing and vexing, yet laughing at all ! 
In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, 
That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick. 
But missing his mirth and agreeable vein, 
As often we wish'd to have Dick back again.'* 

In the letter Eichard writes to William, dated January 
3rd, 1773, in the Fitzwilliam Correspondence, he details 
elaborately the jeux d* esprit which passed at a dinner at 
Eeynolds's, where Johnson, the Dean of Derry, Garrick, &c., 
were present. In those times, philosophers and states- 
men corruscated far more in the resorts of fast men than 
now-a-days; and in their cups were easily reKeved of secrets 
by clever inquirers. Thus it is certain that what with the 
political sources of information directly open to Edmund and 
to William Burke, and also to Samuel Dyer, who was closely 
attached to them, and in constant communication as they 
were, with men in every grade— from third-rate clerks to 
Ministers in office, — and from aspiring Dukes to their hum- 



I 



INTKODUCTIOX. 5 

blest followers out of it — added to liichard Burke's social 
intimacy with everybody, — far more reached William Burke's 
car, and more quickly, than Junius ever told. I much doubt 
whether any other person was as well informed, or sufficiently 
so to have written at the time what Junius wrote. Of all the 
unlikely people to have done so was Lord George Sackville, 
of whom his gi^eat advocate, Mr. Jaques, takes pains to assure 
us that he '^brooded over his wrongs in solitude. '^ Simply 
premising that "William Burke fulfils every one of the conjoint 
requirements of Dr. Good to sustain the characteristics of 
Junius, — that he had, from Conway and others, ample 
means of military information, — aid in legal knowledge from 
Kichard Burke, (a barrister, and afterwards Eecorder of 
Bristol,) without being a lawyer himself, — that he was con- 
stantly in the House, — that he was full of Irish penchants and 
antipathies to Scotchmen, — that he had ample reason to con- 
ceal his authorship, and left no descendants to advance their 
title to the posthumous fame of his achievements — I trust 
that I have said enough to bespeak the kind attention of the 
reader to the somewhat lengthy proofs I am bound to array. 
Edmund and his wife, his brother Eichard, and William, 
seem always to have lived together, first in Great Queen's 
Street, and afterwards at Gregories, Burke's place near Bea- 
consfield: and Mr. Macknight speaks with truth of the ardent 
family affection with which his relative William, together 
with his brother and father-in-law '^ bent reverently towards 
him and gazed affectionately on him, ' ' and of the ^ ' ascendancy ' * 
Burke exercised over them. (Yol. i. 270.) 

In Burke's trips while travelling about England from 
1747, when he entered at the Middle Temple, William 
always accompanied him, and they staid together for some 
time at Monmouth and many other places, where they appear 



INTRODUCTION. 



to have engaged in literary pursuits together, (i. Correspon- 
dence, 24.) 

Mr. Macknight, who seems to have picked up more anec- 
dotes about William Burke than any other writer, says that 
*' William had none of Edmund's ability as a parliamentary 
speaker, though he was not destitute of a certain weight in 
the House of Commons. He was a good man of business. 
He had the reputation of writing many keen satires on the 
political opponents of his friends, and had, undoubtedly, 
considerable literary talent.'' Prior also says that **he found 
himself much better qualified to wield his pen than his tongue. ' ' 
Walpole confirms this in his Memoirs. (Yol. i. p. 275.) 

It will be obvious that the close intimacy and identity of 
political interest, subsisting between Edmund and William, 
not only interweave the great incidents of the public life of 
Edmund Burke with the whole tissue of the evidence, but 
lead to the conclusion that Edmund Burke in all probability 
aided William in writing Junius. And though I would 
rather waive than rely on individual testimony, I think this 
view derives great weight from Dr. Johnson's statement that 
no person but Burke had displayed such ability for political 
controversy as was exhibited in these celebrated letters. 

Of William Burke's power over the mind of Edmund and 
of his skill in inoculating the statesman with his own anti- 
pathies, Mr. Macknight says: — ^^It" (a letter written by 
Edmund Burke to the Ministers in 1 780 on behalf of the 
Eajah of Tanjore) ''showed clearly enough that his friend 
William Burke had already inspired him with all his own 
animosities against the men who held power in Madras.*' 
Goldsmith thus delineates the trio : — 

** Our Burke shall be tongue with a garnish of brains ; • 
Our Will shall be wild fowl, of excellent flavour, 
Our Dick with his pepper ?hall heighten the eavour." 



II. 

EDMUND EUEKE SUSPECTED OF 

eeijs^g jumus. 

^T appears by Edmund Burke's vindicatory letter^'^ in 1771 
to Dr. Markham, then Bishop of Chester, that "William 
introduced Edmund to Dr. Markham as early as 1 754, he 
having been his tutor, and the following passage from 
that remarkable letter of Edmund Burke to his former 
friend throws additional light on the early career of his 
relative. 

" My Lord, Mr. WilHam Burke, the first you set to the bar, has had 
the closest and longest friendship for me ; and has pursued it with 
such nobleness in all respects, as has no example in these times, and 
would have dignified the best periods of history. "Whenever I was in 
question, he has been not only ready, but earnest even to annihilate 
himself; and he has not been only earnest, but fortunate in his 
endeavours in my favor. Looking back to the course of my life, I re- 
member no one considerable benefit in the whole of it, which did not, 
mediately or immediately derive from him. To him I owe my connection 
with Lord Rockingham. Tohimlam indebted for my seat in Parliament. 
To him it is I must refer all the happiness and all the advantages I 



* This letter is the most elaborate in the whole of the Correspon- 
dence given to the world by Earl Fitzwilham, It is an answer to a 
most emphatic remonstrance against the Burkes* attacks on the character 
of Lord Mansfield and others, founded on the belief that they wore the 
authors of Junius. 



8 EDMUND DCKKE SUSPECTED OF BEING JUNIUS. 

received from a long acquaintance with your Lordship. Forme he gave 
up a Respectable employment of a thousand pounds a year, with other 
very fair pretensions. He gave up an employment which he filled 
with pleasure to himself, with great honor to himself, and with great 
satisfaction to his principal in office. Indeed, he both held and quitted 
it with such a well arranged discharge of all his duties, that a strict 
friendship subsists between him and the principal he left, from that 
moment even to this, amidst all the rage and confusion of parties. But 
he resigned it to give an example and an encouragement to me — not to 
grow fearful and languid in the course to which he had always advised 
me. To encourage me, he gave his own interest the first stab : — Fcete^ 
non dolet. This, my Lord, was true friendship ; and if I act an honor- 
able part in life, the first of all benefits, it is in great measure due to 
him. He loved your Lordship too, and would have died for you — I 
am thoroughly persuaded he would. He had the most ardent afiection 
for you, and the most unbounded confidence in you. If there was any 
difference in his regard for you and me, it is that there were certain 
disparities which made him look up to you with greater reverence." 

N^ot only was Eurke suspected of being Junius by his 
enemies, but equally so by the oldest friends of himself and 
liis cousin. The most signal instance of this fact was the 
letter to which the above was an answer, and which Dr. 
Markham addressed to Burke towards the close of 1771, 
and Burke destroyed, but of the purport of which the draft 
of his answer contains conclusive evidence. JSTot only had 
Dr. Markham been a kind, but he was, according to Burke's 
own showing, a revered and beloved friend. In 1765 
he had written a letter to William Burke in the warmest 
terms of familiar friendship, speaking then with generous 
indignation of Edmund Burke's enemies, and hoping that 
the rise of his reputation ^' would silence malignity or destroy 
its ejffects,'' and rejoicing over the *' disgrace of William 
Burke's opponents." (i. Correspondence, 92.) Junius appears — 
he assails Lord Mansfield and the King. Burke is suspected : 



EDMUND BURKE SUSPECTED 01 BEI^•G JUNIUS. 9 

and Dr. Markham, the tried Mend of the family, is induced, 
clearly without a vestige of personal offence, to write a letter 
teeming with censure so severe, and '^ couched in such un- 
measured language,'' that Burke replies to part of it in the 
following terms, disclosing as they do the gravamen of the 
charge against him: — 

" After giving the testimony of my enemies, as grounds of charge 
against me, your Lordship comes to their assistance, towards the close 
of your letter, with a httle of your own ; and this too for a purpose, 
which even after all I had read did not a little astonish me. It was in 
justification of the libellers for having fijsed on me as the author of 
Junius, from a resemblance which your Lordship supposes my house 
bears to a "hole of adders." My Lord, I am sorry to find that these 
writers have so able an advocate, which though tbey stand in need of, 
I have not at all the charity to wish them. But since these worthy 
gentlemen are under your Lordship's protection I say not one word 
Bgainst them except that, in this instance, they did net reason logically, 
nor draw their conclusions in any good form. For, passing that most 
obhging simile of "the adder's hole" as not in strict argument, I did 
not " famish the premises " your Lordship supposes ; and if I had, the 
conclusion of these gentlemen was irregular. For, supposing all your 
Lordship says was not very greatly mistaken, how does it follow from 
the discourses of my friends that I am the author of Junius as these 
worthy persons peremptorily assert .^ " 

Eurke's defence of William Eurke, if it can he so called, 
is as follows : — 

"My Lord, I owe this honest testimony, all I can return, for a friend- 
ship of which I can never make myself deserving. As to him my 
Lord, I am not capable of telling you in what manner he felt your 
charges. He answers nothing to tbem ; be only bids me tell you that, 
never being able to suppose himself in a situation of serious controversy 
with your Lordship, much less as the culprit in a criwdnal accusation 
for a matter of state^ brought by you upon his private conversation, he 
knows not what to say. He is at your mercy. He really cannot put 
his pen to paper on this subject, though he bas two or three times 
attempted it." 



10 EDMUND DITRKi: SUSPKCTED OF BEING JUNIUS. 

These remarks are a conclusive proof that in Dr. Markham'g 
judgment (no slight authority) Junius proceeded from the 
Eurkes. That such impression was firmly rooted in his mind 
is deducible first, from the fact that Dr. Markham not only 
Beems to have used the strongest and most unqualified terms, 
extending to what Mr. Macknight calls '' the extreme limits 
of episcopal acrimony," but he does so after Burke had had 
ample opportunity of exonerating himself in a previous inter- 
view with the Bishop at Kew Green, in a discourse which 
Burke reminds the Bishop ^^ spread out into great extent 
and variety ;" and in which he had therefore elaborately 
vindicated himself, (i. Correspondence,-^ 270.) It was thus 
no off hand impression on the mind of Dr. Markham, nor 
was it short-lived; for he never appears, by the Correspondence, 
to have written to the Burkes again : and as Edmund Burke in 
forwarding to him a letter from Dr. Leland more than two years 
afterwards, apologizes for an apparent want of delicacy in doing 
so, in terms of studied and ceremonious courtesy, to which no 
answer seems to have been given, it is probable that the breach 
was not soon healed. Mr. Macknight strives to show that Dr. 
Markham was actuated by servility to the King and the 
desire of promotion. Admitting that possibly to some extent 
this may have been so ; yet though it might account for an 
estrangement, and for dissuasion and remonstrance, it cer- 
tainly leaves untouched the sincerity of the Bishop's belief 
that the Burkes were the authors of the bitterest possible 
anonymous attacks on public men : nor does it in the least 
prove that the indignation expressed in this private letter 
to his old friends, was other than the genuine utterance of 

* I have thus, throughout, indicated Lord Fitz William's Edition of 
Burke'fc Conespondence, in 4 vols. Riyrngtons. 1844. 



EDMUND BURKE SUSPECTED OF BEING JUNIUS. 11 

his deep conviction of its justice. Dr. Markham might cer- 
tainly have been mistaken : but he was a man of penetration 
and discernment, and whose integrity was so great that Burke 
reiterates his esteem and regard for him long after he had 
been denounced by him . [N'o one had had more intimate means 
of knowing the opinions, political tendencies, personal anti- 
pathies and antecedents of the men he accused, or of testing 
the probabiKties of their authorship of Junius. He is there- 
fore a witness the weight of whose evidence it it impossible 
to gainsay. 




III. 

EDMUND BUEKE'S DENIALS. 

OR was the suspicion by any means confined to Dr. 
Markham, among Burke's own friends. The letters 
in which Charles Townshend begs him to give an 
explicit denial to the charge are published in the 
Eitzwilliam edition of the Correspondence. Burke's 
reply of the 17th October, 1771, to the first of 
these appeals, was so far short of a positive contradiction 
that Townshend writes again on November 20th in these 
terms : — '* In your letter to me, you say that you have 
' been as ready as you ought to be in disclaiming in the most 
precise terms, these writings, etc., to me and to all friends.' '* 
^ ^ «' << Objections have been stated by one or two 
persons, to whom I showed your letter to me, that the words 
do not in themselves contain a direct denial of the fact.*' 
-^ ii- ^ a J j-QQ-^ ^jjg liberty to relate this whole business 
to your cousin William Burhe who advised me to write to you^ 
It is tolerably plain from this that jrHliam Burke makes 
no denial, either for his relative or himself. The answer 
of Edmund Burke contains a strangely worded reply to 
the statement repeated in this letter of Townshend, viz. that 
he had ^^ never positively declared in express terms that he 
was neither directly nor indirectly engaged in the publication 
of Junius' s Letters." Burke says ^^ I now give you my word 



EDMUND HriiKE's DENIALS. 13 

and honor that I am not the author of Junius, and that I 
know not the author of that paper ^ and I do authorize you to 
say so." This is explicit enough and doubtless true enough 
as to the authorship; but what is meant by ^^that paper" 
when he denies his 'knowledge of the author ? !N^o one could 
call the series of letters then approaching their completion, 
''a paper." They were not such, in any sense of the word. 
If applicable at all to any Letters of Junius, it must have 
referred to that one of them only which Townshend hap- 
pened to have named in his first letter of inquiry, in which 
he mentions ^A^ letter signed Zeno, and calls it "that paper." 
Burke's disclaimer also applies, therefore, alone to it, and of 
such one letter, taken singly, he might not have known of 
his own knowledge of the authorship. Indeed if his cousin 
WiUiam were the author it is almost certain that one or two 
of those letters must have been written, dispatched and 
printed, when Burke was at too great a distance to have seen 
them beforehand. JSTor is it at all likely that "William would 
have given or written to Edmund a formal statement of his 
authorship. 

Burke's answer therefore as to his knowledge of the author- 
ship is very ambiguous and incomplete. At this period, 
says Mr. Macknight, before Dr. Markham's charge, and 
before angry suspicions of Burke as the author of Junius 
had reached their climax, Burke had given the clever refusal 
to satisfy Sir "William Draper's interrogation, or to give him 
a meeting. "When, however, at a subsequent period, as 
Mr. Macknight informs us, this " suspicion, without increas- 
ing the opinion entertained of Burke's powers as a writer, 
had a most pernicious effect in engendering a distrust of his 
character for frankness and honesty,"— "exposed him to 
rude attacks which, without general reprehension, were 



14 EDMUND BUKKe's DENIALS. 

frequently made upou him in the House of Commons," — 
*^ and subjected him to the faint defences and feeble vindi- 
cations of candid friends," — he must have been powerfully 
impelled, not merely by motives of a personal kind, but by 
the higher sense of the responsibilities of public usefulness 
with which his masterly talents invested him, to escape by 
positive denial from these damaging imputations. He is 
not blameable for going to the utmost verge of the limits of 
literal truth in doing so : his offence was venial, even if he 
slightly exceeded them. *^ The belief," Mr. Macknight pro- 
ceeds to assures us, ^' that Burke and Junius were the same 
person, continued during his life, has been encouraged by all 
his biographers, and cannot be said, in defiance of all argu- 
ment, (?) to have completely subsided in the present day." 
It certainly has not ; for Peter Burke, Esq. the accomplished 
Editor of the Peerage and Baronetage, has, in his remark- 
ably able and most interesting life of his great namesake, 
given many strong reasons in support of his belief that Burke 
either originated or helped the letters of Junius ; and that the 
likelihood is that they did not emanate from a single writer.^ 
(p. 70, 2nd edition.) Both Sir W. Blackstone and Lord 
Mansfield, no mean judges of evidence, were of the same 
opinion. 

* See also the Pamphlet entitled, "Junius proved to be Burke. 1826." 



IV. 

ALLEGED AISTAGONISM OF EDMUND BURKE 
AND JUXIUS DISPEOVED. 







LTHOUGH it is by no means requisite in order to 
prove that William Eurke was Junius that all the 
political opinions, public sympathies and antipathies 
k^RP of Edmund Burke and Junius should be in exact 
c©^ accordance, — still it may fairly be expected that I 
^ ^ should show that there existed no general or material 
disagreement, especially as my case rests greatly on the close 
political fellowship and private brotherhood subsisting be- 
tween the Burkes. This I can do. And I propose first to 
analyse and test the instances of alleged divergence between 
the opinions of Junius and the statesman. 

The first, and certainly both the boldest and the most 
remarkable of the statements in behalf of this discrepancy, 
is that of the Editor of "Woodfall's edition (vol. i. p. 101.) 
He says, first, that Burke could not have written in the style 
of Junius, which was so precisely the reverse of his own, [of 
this anon] nor could he have consented to disparage his own 
talents in the manner in which Junius has disparaged them 
in his letters to the printer of the "Public Advertiser," dated 
October 5th, 1771." K"owthe only reference to or mention 
of Burke in that letter occurs in his illustration of this prin- 
ciple which Junius puts in italics : — " That we should not gene* 



16 ALLEGED ANTAGONISM OF EDMUND BUEKE 

rally reject the friendship or services of any man, because he 
differs from us in a particular opinion ^ He afterwards says, 
*^I will not reject a bill which tends to confine parlia- 
mentary privileges within reasonable bounds, though it 
should be stolen from the house of Cavendish and intro- 
duced by Mr. Onslow. The features of the infant are 
a proof of the descent, and vindicate the noble birth from 
the baseness of the adoption. I willingly accept of a sar- 
casm from Colonel Barre, or a simile from Mr. Burke. 
Even the silent vote of Mr. Calcraft is worth reckoning 
in a division." And this was said, as the context shows, of 
men who, independently ^^ of signal instances of unpopular 
opinion, may well be supposed to have no view but the public 
good." Therefore whether we take the assertion — ^^ I will- 
ingly accept a simile from Mr. Burke," as standing alone or 
having reference to the context, it is equally untrue that it 
is intended to '^disparage his talents." It does nothing of 
the kind, and moreover the use of so palpable a mis-statement 
is a proof of the strait to which the Editor was driven in his 
desire to find something hostile to Burke in Junius. It is 
very remarkable that there is no' other reference to Burke 
in the published Letters of Junius ; men of far less note are 
praised or censured, but, be the motive what it might, there 
is a marked intent to avoid mention of him. This is precisely 
the course natural for a concealed partisan to take. 

The only important subject on which, as we shall see, 
Edmund Burke and Junius held different views was on 
triennial Parliaments — a matter purely speculative. Few 
brothers but would have differed on something more material. 

In the series of miscellaneous letters by Junius, there is a 
report of Edmund Burke's speech at the opening of the 
session in November, 1767. It is given verbatim in "Wood- 



AND JUXIUS DISVllOYEU. 17 

falFs Junius, vol. ii. p. 500. Why, if there were no special 
liaiso7ij political or personal, between Burke and Junius, 
should Burke's speech alone have been thus favored ? At 
that time no regular reports with the speakers' names were 
allowed to be published ; and this of Burke was given under 
the fiction of being an anonymous speech in a political club, 
and ostensibly a ^' merejeu cV esprit.'" The Editor gives it as 
a speech of Burke, transmitted by Junius in his own hand- 
writing. 

The alleged variance respecting George Grenville will be 
separately considered. 




THE STATE OE PARTIES, 1766-7. 




)ET us glance at the state of political parties before and 
during the time that these Letters appeared, and trace 
the relation they bore to the enmities, sympathies, 
and interests of the Burkes. 

The feeble dynasty of Lord Rockingham had ex- 
pired. It had neither internal strength nor external 
support. The nobleman at its head was a man of high honor, 
respectable parts, and unswerving consistency to Whig 
principles ; but was by no means qualified to wrestle in debate 
with the skilled leaders of an angry opposition, or, as the 
event proved, to cope with the cabals of the Court party, or 
conciliate the affections of a King who tolerated a Whig 
Ministry only as a temporary evil. General Conway, a brave 
officer but a timid and irresolute statesman, was selected to 
lead the Lower House, and appointed joint Secretary of State 
with the young Duke of Grafton, a man wholly inexperienced 
in office ; fickle, lazy, sensual, and presumptuous. JS'either 
of these men gave power or prestige to the Administration. 
Respectable Mr. Dowdeswell was the inefficient Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer. Lord JS'orthington held the Great 
Seal : but was a man of slight mental ability. The Duke 
of Newcastle, of the whole Cabinet, alone possessed any 
official experience. Lord Temple, Grenville, Saville, Towns- 



THE STATE OF PAKTTES. 19 

hend, Loixi Shelburne and other leading AVhigs held aloof 
from this frail Ministry. The weakness of the leaders gave 
increased importance to the offices of their Secretaries, and 
as Edmund Burke was Private Secretary to the Premier in 
the Upper House, and William Eurke Under Secretary to the 
leader of the Commons, it is manifest how perfect must have 
been the means which these two men possessed not only of 
acquainting themselves with the hidden springs of public 
conduct and the character of each statesman, but how deep 
must have been their interest in the succeeding phases of 
Ministries and parties, and the political intrigues of the times. 

The secession of the Duke of Grafton in the middle of the 
last Session during the Eockingham Ministry was the signal 
of disruption : and was probably designed for the purpose of 
disbanding them, ^ow the interests of the Eurkes were 
intimately identified with the Eockingham party. They 
were bound to its chief by every tie of political affinity and 
personal gratitude. ISTot only did Eurke adhere to the 
Marquis on grounds of principle, but he revered him for his 
virtues and loved him for his generosity ; for so liberally had 
he aided the income which Eurke' s independent spirit nar- 
rowed, that the Marquis, before his death, cancelled bonds 
which, together with other aid to Eurke, must have amounted 
to £30,000. 

The Duke of Grafton's paltry desertion of the Eockinghams 
was speedily followed by that of Lord iS'orthington, who went 
to the King and told him the Ministry could not go on. The 
resignation of the Marquis necessarily ensued, and the King 
sent for Lord Chatham ; who set to work and constructed 
what Eurke afterwards designated as an Administration *^so 
chequered and speckled — a piece of joinery so crossly indent- 
ed, and whimsically dovetailed — a cabinet so variously inlaid 



20 THE STATE OE PARTIES. 

— such a piece of diversified mosaic — etc., etc., composed of 
treacherous friends and open enemies — that it was indeed a 
very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to 
stand on.'' 

Horace Walpole, who had, according to his own showing, 
been acting throughout, the role of cabinet breaker and 
busybody in chief, thus depicts the immediate result of his 
successful machinations against the Rockinghams, with his 
tool Conway : — 

"The Ministerial Whigs, or party of the late Ministers, were enraged. 
Rockingham was indignant at being displaced for Grafton, and Rich- 
mond for Shelbume ; and was the more hurt that Mr. Conway suffered 
this preference. He complained to me of Conway with much anger." 

Still less was the love Burke bore to the Ministry which put 
him oat of office, and which it was the mission of Junius to 
lacerate and degrade. Let us however pursue the history of 
the party at this eventful juncture. Lord Temple and his 
brother, George Grenville, owing to the untoward demands 
and haughty temper of the former, were excluded from the 
new Administration. It became therefore an object to con- 
ciliate them, together with all who sought at once to recon- 
struct a Rockingham Government and harass their successful 
enemies in office. The Duke of Grafton, as he had calculated 
when he left the late Ministry, was among the first of those 
nominated to replace them. To the treacherous friend, 
the first fruits of treachery were very naturally offered. 
No one of the seceders behaved so basely to Lord Eocking- 
ham, or so injuriously to the Eurkes. "No one received casti- 
gation so bitter and relentless from Junius. His Grace had 
added servility to baseness, and offered in abject terms to 
accept the humblest office.^ He was appointed First Lord of 

* Massey^s History, vol. i. 282, 



TnK STATE OF rAETIES. 21 

11 ic Treasury. Lord Camdeu succeeded Lord Xorthington, 
who, as second betrayer of the late Cabinet, received the exalted 
office of President of the Council. Charles Townshend re- 
placed Mr. Dowdeswell, and Lord Shelburne was made one 
of the Secretaries of State. Pitt received the Privy Seal, 
his Earldom, and the post of First Minister. Among his 
subordinates, and less obnoxious to the Kockingham con- 
nection, were Lord I^orth, Earre, a powerful speaker, and 
James Grenville, a younger brother of Lord Temple. 

The conduct of the First Minister was in keeping with his 
character. To gain strength from the Duke of Bedford, he 
repelled the advances of the Marquis of Eockingham^ and 
was in turn repelled by the Duke of Bedford. His haughty 
and contemptuous spirit seems now to have sought its chief 
vent in affronts to that section of his Ministry who had 
proved fiiendly to the Eockingham Cabinet. Increasing at- 
tacks of gout and the trials of infirmity aggravated the chronic 
waywardness of his temper. The patriotic effort of the 
Marquis of Eockingham to uphold Pitt's authority in the office 
from which his minions had expelled him, was repaid by 
repeated insults to the Eockinghams, who had remained 
in office in compliance with his express wishes, and with the 
generous consent of their late leader. Among these were 
General Conway and William Burhe, 

Mr. Massey, in his trustworthy history, says that ^^no man 
had been so ill used by Chatham as Lord Eockingham," and 
that he '^ personally marked his indignation at the treatment 
which he had experienced at the hands of Chatham." Horace 
Walpole, speaking of the conduct which the whole of the 
Eockingham connection received at the hands of the gouty 
despot, says that ^' the wound rankled so deep in Mr. 
Conway's bosom that he dropped all intercourse with Lord 



22 THE STATE OF PARTIES. 

Chatham, and though he continued to conduct the King's 
business in the House of Commons, he would neither receive 
nor pay any deference to the Minister's orders." 

If it thus rankled in Mr. Conway's bosom, how much 
deeper must have been the resentment of the bosom friends 
of the ex-Minister, whose opening fortunes were crushed by 
the Premier. The remnant of the Eockinghams were now 
forced to resign. 

William Burke, stung to the quick by these injuries, and 
disgusted by the feeble inconsistency of Conway, resigned 
his office in February, 1767, sacrificing a post yielding him a 
salary of £1000 a year, which he could ill afibrd to sur- 
render. 

Mark the sequel I Two months after — on the 28th of 
April, 1767 — appeared the first known Letter of Junius (under 
the signature of Poplicola^') in the '^Public Advertiser." 
In that Letter Chatham, though not named, is depicted in 
the character of a Eoman dictator — a distinguished citizen 
in whom the prudence of the state invested ''power sufficient 
to preserve or to oppress his country," and who proves to be 
''a man purely and perfectly bad." His conduct, among 

* The Quarterly Eeview, vol. xc. p. 107, forcibly upholds, as does 
Lord Mahon, the authenticity of all the Letters, under whatever signa- 
tures, inserted by Woodfall's Editor in the three volume edition, as 
being written by Junius. They are doubtless, as there declared, 
" indisputably genuine," and we agree with the Quarterly Eeview er, 
that in this faith should all inquiry be conducted. These early letters 
afford most valuable clues to the truth. Lord Mahon corroborates this 
view. He says the assertions of the Editors of 1812 will be found 
** borne out in a most remarkable degree by the letters from the archives 
at Stowe, in which the writer, who certainly was Junius, avows in 
explicit terms not only the authorship of the papers signed Atticus and 
Ludiis but also^ as he says^ of many more,'" 



THE STATE OF PARTIES. 23 

other deliuqueiicies, is characterized by a '^prostrate humility 
in the closet, but a lordly dictation of terras to the people by 
whose interest he had been supported, and by whose fortunes 
he had subsisted."'^ (Vol. iii. p. 456.) 

The wrongs of the Rockinghams are no less avenged 
than clearly sketched in these stinging charges : — 

'' The principal nobiUty, who might disdain to submit to the upstart 
insolence of a dictator, must be removed from every post of honor and 
authority ; all public employments must be filled with a despicable set 
of creatures, who, having neither experience nor capacity, nor any weight 
or respect in their own persons, will necessarily derive all then- Httle 
busy unportance from him." 

It ^dll be most convenient now for the linking of the cir- 
cumstantial evidence by which the case must be proved 
against William Burke, to take consecutively the events of 
the day, the private letters of Edmund Burke, and his speeches 
and pamphlets, as an index to the policy of the Burkes : 
comparing them closely with the contemijorarylabors of Junius. , 
I believe this has never been done : and hence the failure to 
discover Junius. 

The candid reader, especially if he be somewhat acquainted 
with, the politics of the times, will probably have little diffi- 
culty to see the close keeping between the interests of the 
Eockingham party as aspirants to a restoration to office, and 
the personal interests of the Burkes, witli the line taken 
by Junius throughout the entire course of his writings. 

* Chatham ceased to hold the Privy Seal in October, 1768. 



YI. 



OVEETUEES TO THE DUKE OE EEDEORD AND 

THE MAEQTJIS OE EOCKINGHAM IN 1767.— LOED 

BUTE.— LOED CHATHAM.— CONWAY. 




^YEETUEES had been made in the early part of 1767, 
first to the Duke of Eedford, to join and strengthen the 
new Government, to the exclusion of the Eockinghams, 
and these all failing, negotiations followed, through 
the mediation of Lord Lyttelton and others with Lord 
I ^ Eockingham for a union of his party and the Duke of 
Bedford with some section of the Chatham and Grafton 
Administration. It was however soon apparent that Lord 
Eockingham was ofi'ered merSly a divided dynasty — and 
worse still — that his followers were not to be included in the 
first arrangements, but to fall in as opportunity occurred. 

Mr. Massey says, speaking of the autumnal events of 
1767, that when Chatham's seclusion became certain, "the 
Duke of Grafton was obliged again to have recourse to the 
"Whig connection ; and after an ineffectaal attempt to accom- 
modate the several pretensions of the parties which respec- 
tively acknowledged the Duke of Bedford and the Marquis of 
Eockingham as their chiefs, the alliance of the latter was 
abandoned, and the three principal members of the Bedford 
faction — the Lords Gower, Weymouth, and Sandwich— 



OVERTAKES TO THE DUKE OF JiEDEORD AND OTHERS. 25 

joined the Administration." Lord Korth succeeded Charles 
Townshend, and Lord Hillsborough was the new and third 
Secretary of the State to the Colonies, this being a new office. 

Before this, and about the time when Chatham's abortive 
negotiation with the Eedfords was afloat, Junius, under 
another signature, wrote his first authenticated Letter (on 
April 28th, 1767,) to the '^ Public Advertiser," denouncing 
Lord Chatham ; with an evident design to destroy hi& 
Ministry and demolish his lingering prestige, and with it 
any power he might have retained to cold-shoulder the 
Eockingham party a second time. Lord Chatham is therein 
accused of treacherous designs in suspending the laws by 
proclamation : by which the writer doubtlessly refers not 
merely to the embargo on the exportation of corn in 1766, 
a justifiable measure, but to Lord Camden's audacity (whom 
he calls an apostate lawyer) in endeavouring as he did to 
maintain that this order on Council was not only justifiable 
but legal — a doctrine fraught with peril to constitutional 
liberty. Chatham is charged, under the allegory of a Eoman 
Dictator, with insolence to the principal nobility and with 
filling all public employments (that which Mr. "William 
Eurke had just vacated among the rest) with '^a set of 
despicable creatures," and with conduct tending to foment 
discord between the mother country and the Colonies, 
with dictation to the people, and prostrate humility in the 
closet," etc., etc. 

On the 24th of June following, Junius again attacks Chatham 
as ^^ below contempt," and as the ^'stalking horse" of Lord 
Bute, whom he charges with having '^ a natural itch for doing 
mischief," — the exact expression which Burke applies to 
the Duke of jS'ewcastle in a letter to Lord Eockingham. 
Junius describes the Ministry as having '^come together 



26 OVERTURES TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND OTHERS. 

by a sort of fortuitous concourse, and who have hitherto done 
nothing else but jumble and jostle one another, without 
being able to settle into any one regular or consistent figure :'' 
just as Edmund Burke afterwards spoke of them as ^^a piece 
of diversified mosaic, — a tesselated pavement without ce- 
ment, — here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white, — 
2)atriots and courtiers. King's friends and republicans.'' 

The overtures made through Lord Lyttelton and others to 
the Marquis of Eockingham were unhesitatingly refused, and 
mainly on the ground that even if the difficulty could be 
overcome which habitually embarrassed every Cabinet of 
the times, viz. the sinister influence, supposed or real, of the 
Earl of Bute,^ still Lord Eockingham would refuse to take 

* I do not accredit the vehement assertion of the day that Lord Bute 
exercised this paramount influence over the Sovereign, after he ceased 
to be First Minister in April, 1763. The belief that he retained the 
whole of his sway without its responsibilities made him indeed the 
bete noire of each successive Ministry, and, in so far, created much of the 
power they assailed. I believe that Grenville, during his reign, exercised 
far more actual influence than Bute during his whole life. It is certain, 
from Burke's own showing, that the Bute influence had lost some of its 
terrors even during the Ministerial anarchy which preceded the retire- 
ment of Chatham in 1768. 

The influence under which the King really acted in the earlier years 
of his reign was more probably that of his mother, than of her reputed 
paramour. I have, however, strong reason to believe that the King 
was as self-willed as he was prejudiced. Dr. Cookson, Canon of 
"Windsor, was private tutor to the young Princes, and had the means of 
a far more intimate knowledge of the personal character of the Sove- 
reign than most of his Ministers, and all his biographers. The King, 
as well as the Princes, honored Br. Cookson with friendly intercourse 
long after his tutorship was over. He was my mother's uncle, and 
many of the days of my childhood were spent with him at his house, 
in the Castle. I derived a strong impression from the anecdotes my 



OVERTURES TO THE DUKE OE BEDEORl) A^D OTUEKS. 27 

office without his friends. The offer, probably made to be 
refused, was no sooner rejected than the existing Adminis- 
tration, with Chatham nominally at its head, and Grafton 
mis-managing it during the Premier's utter neglect of his 
duties, very contentedly resolved to go on in their discordant 
weakness and dependence on the King. Eurke shortly after 
writes thus to Lord Eockingham, of the negotiation and its 
failure: — 

" If we may judge from appearances, the consequences which have 
attended it are not very displeasing to your enemies. His Majesty 
never was in better spirits. He has got a Ministiy weak and depend- 
ent : and what is better, willing to continue so. They all think they 
have very handsomely discharged any engagements of honor they 
miglit have had to your Lordship ; and, to say the truth, seem not very 
miserable at being rid of you. They are certainly determined to hold 
with the present garrison, and to make the best agreement they can 
amongst themselves ; for this purpose they are negotiating something 
with Charles Townshend." 

" Lord Bute is seldom a day out of town : I cannot find whether he 
confers directly and personally vrith the Ministry, but am told that he 
does." (Letter of August 1st, 1767.) 

In the letter of Edmund Eurke to the Marquis of Eock- 
ingham, on the 1st of August, 1767, he says that he has had 
a conversation with Conway on the overtures made at that 
juncture to the Eockingham party, and adds, '^ I never knew 

father and mother related to me in after years, that the King was a 
man, not only of positive opinions, but of a self-exercised and thorough- 
ly independent judgment. Apropos to the subject of this essay, (though 
not to this characteristic) I remember that on one of the King's uncere- 
monious calls on my gTeat uncle, on going into his libraiy to receive 
him, he found the King had taken up a "Junius," lying open on the 
table. My im.cle was in consternation : but the King quietly put it 
down, and without any comment, entered with unperturbed good 
nature, on the object of his visit. 



28 OVEKTUKES TO THE DUKK OF BEDFOKD AND OTHEES. 

him talk in a more alert, Hrm, or decided tone. There was 
not the slightest trace of his usual diffidence or hesitation/' 
* * * << J declare his conversation did more thoroughly 
justify your non-acceptance (of office) than anything I had 
heard either from yourself or others." Burke speaks of the 
^indignation" it excited in his mind, and sums up the whole 
attempt as one calculated ^^to lower Lord Eockingham's 
character, and to disunite his party." This must have re- 
kindled the resentment of the Burkes against each of those 
who had deserted the Eockinghara connection, and as regards 
AVilliam Burke especially against Conway, his late chief. 
Their just expectations of a restoration to power, had been 
revived only to be disappointed. 

The rancorous acerbity, nevertheless, of the Miscellaneous 
Letters of Junius, at that time directed against every man who 
conduced to this treatment of the Eockinghams, is suffici- 
ently accounted for only on the ground that they were from 
the pen of one of the greatest sufferers by it. Such were the 
Burkes. On the 1 8th of the same month, Burke writing again 
to Lord Eockingham on the same subject, declares Conway to 
have recently joined the corps of the *' King's Friends," and 
after attributing to him the ^ ^ j ob " of giving Lord Pred. Camp- 
bell the Secretaryship to the Lord Lieutenant, Burke roundly 
declares that '^ Conway is gone fairly to the devil. Lord Fred. 
Campbell is Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Towns- 
hend). This is Conway's job." And he had previously said, 
''They certainly are negotiating something with Charles 
Townshend.''^ 

On the 2oth of the same month Junius writes his short 
Letter (IV. )> attacking theTownshends, the Chancellor, and the 
treachery of the Duke of Grafton, and ends it with this sting 
as a climax :- — ^' Is it for such a man that Comvay foregoes 



OYERTTJRES TO THK DUKE OF BEDFORL ANT> OTHERS. 29 

the connections of his youth, and the friends of his best and 
ripest judgment: — ^OTempora mores T '^ (Woodfall's 
Junius, ii. 470.) 

Let it be noted that William Burke had a special grudge 
against Conway. He had been his right hand when under 
him at the Treasuiy ; he wrote official letters for him, and 
most ably, as I have ascertained by a careful research at the 
State Paper Office, and had a just right to expect one of those 
very appointments from which it is proved, by Edmund 
Eurke's conversation with Conway, he would have been 
unjustly excluded, had the negotiations with Lord Eocking- 
ham succeeded. The men, moreover, who succeeded and 
supplanted him were Bradshaw and Scotchmen, since the 
names of David Hume and William Frazer occur among the 
official papers at "William Burke's retirement. XowJnnius, 
in another letter, sneers at the ^'natural obscurity of Scotch 
Clerks in the back ground," — all of whom were the marked 
targets of Junius' s venom, and to a degree of rancour un- 
accountable had Junius not been in a post and of a rank to 
have been personally incensed by them, as weU as by Cabinet 
Ministers. This William Bui^ke was. 

It is a remarkable fact, that in Letter IV. Junius declares 
of Lord Townshend and his brother Charles, that he has 
served under the one, and has been forty times promised to 
be served by the other. WiUiam Biu'ke retained his office 
of Under Secretary in the Treasmy after Qiarles Townshend 
came into office as Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and this 
therefore is Htcrally tnie of him, and there can be no doubt 
that Lord Townshend had once intimacy enough with 
them to make a promise as much to his interest as the con- 
ciliation of the Burkes. That they had reason bitterly to 
dislike this ^^ ;;/7r mlile fratrum,'' as Junius terms them, is 



30 OVERTURES TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD AND OTHERS. 

manifest from the account given in the '^Gren villa Corres- 
pondence,'^ vol. iii. p. 236, of the insolent refusal of Charles to 
exchange his post at the Pay Office, in May, 1766, when he 
was urged by the Eockingham party to accept a higher office 
and aid them in Parliament — ''he meant to keep his place, 
they durst not take it from him if thoy could, and could not 
if they durst." 

Immediately after Charles Townshend's death (on Sep- 
tember 4th, 1767,) we find Edmund Eurke denying in 
Parliament the assertion that he had conceived any plan 
for remedying the general distress, and prompt to discredit 
any merit imputed to him but that of talents. (See report of 
Burke's Speech, "Woodfall's Junius, ii. p. 501.) 

The flattering remonstrance of Junius with '' Mr. Towns- 
hend," on his complaint that the public gratitude had not been 
answerable to his deserts, (Letter, October 5th, 1771,) refers 
to Burke's friend then living. 

A few days after the appearance of Letter IV., the Burkes 
and Eockinghams had an additional reason for damaging 
and repudiating Conway, and the whole of the Grafton 
Administration. This was made known to Edmund Burke 
by the Duke of IN'ewcastle in a letter to him dated August 
30th 1767, in which his Grace says — '' Mr. Eigby asked my 
Lord Albemarle, as from himself, whether the Marquis 
(of Eockingham) was clear of Mr. Conway, and all con- 
nection with the present Administration ? " To which Lord 
Albemarle said, '' that he hoped he luas ; " and my Lord Albe- 
marle adds, in his letter to me, — '' It will be very necessary to 
have that point thoroughly known before any steps can be 
taken towards a renewal of the negotiations with the Duke of 
Bedford and his friends." A fortnight scarcely elapses before 
Junius writes the bitterest Letter of the whole series : in 



OVERTURES TO THE DUXE OF BEDFORD AXIi OTHERS. 31 

which he deals metaphorical invectives, after the exact 
fasliion of Burke's similes, at the Duke of Grafton, Conway, 
Lord Camden, Lord Xorthington, Lord North, Lord Granby 
Sir Gilbert Elliot, and the whole fry of Scotch subs : a 
tolerably wholesale mode of adopting the Duke of Newcastle's 
hint to Edmund Burke. The following morceau may serve 
as a specimen of the whole : — 

^' Your principal character, my Lord, is a young Duke,* 
mounted upon a lofty phaeton ; his head grows giddy ; his 
horses carry him violently down a precipice, and a bloody 
carcase, the fatal emblem of Britannia, lies mangled under 
his wheels. By the side of this furious charioteer, sits 
Caution, without foresight,! a motley thing, half military, 
scarcely civil. He, too, would guide, but, let whro will 
drive, is determined to have a seat in the carriage." 
(Woodfall's Edition of Junius.) 

On August 1st, 1767, Edmund Burke writes to Lord 
Eockingham, that ^' Lord Bute is seldom a day out of town : 
I cannot find" he adds, *' whether he confers directly and 
personally with the Ministry hd am told he doesT (Corres- 
pondence, i. 107.) On September 16th, Lord Bute having been 
previously, (in June) sketched and dismissed as a ^^ notorious 
coward, skulking under a petticoat," etc., who, "" without 
abilities, had a natural itch for doing mischief," ( Voodfall's 
Junius, ii. 466, ) is again brought on the taiyis, and Lord Towns- 
hend, the new Lord Lieutenant, is taunted with his '' friend- 
ship" for him : and in the labored satire of October 22nd, 1 767, 
(Woodfall's Junius, ii. 482,) Junius represents the Duke of 
Grafton, Lords Northington, Camden, Shelburne, Townshend, 

* The Duke of Grafton. 
t Mr. Conway, Secretary of State for the Xorthern Department. 



Ii2 OVERTURES TO THE DUKK OF HEDFOKD AND OTHERS. 

and Mr. Conway, as expressing their abject allegiance to 
Lord Bute. Conway however left the Ministry on the acces- 
sion of the Bedfordites, on the 20th of January following, 
and from that time all abuse of him by Junius ceased ; and 
Edmund Burke tells Dr. Markham, as we have seen, that 
William Burke was on friendly terms with him : and within 
four months of Conway's secession, Junius praises his '^firm- 
ness !" and in May, 1769, (Yol. iii. p. 204,) declares that he 
''has mended his reputation," ^^Sic tempora mutantury^^ etc. 

The Bedfords having now joined the Ministerial camp, 
became, as we shall see, objects of attack and hatred con- 
jointly to Burke and Junius. 

To Lord Shelburne, the Burkes naturally entertained the 
strongest aversion. Junius describes him in Miscellaneous 
Letter V., as " heir apparent of Loyolla," and begs Lord 
Town^hend, he, having a taste for sketching, to paint him 
" as Malagrida." In the lampoon in Letter YIL, he is again 
described as the best qualified devil to di-aw up the in- 
structions to Lord Townshend, on his appointment to the 
Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. 

Edmund Burke's hatred of this Lord, and belief in his 
mischievous enmity to the Lord Eockingham, is sufficiently 
evinced in his letter to that nobleman, in which he says, on 
July 18th, 1768, " Lord Shelburne still continues in adminis- 
tration, though as adverse and as much disliked as ever." 
(Correspondence, vol. i. p. 159.) 




VII. 

GEORGE GEE^YILLE.— THE BUEKES JlNB JUMUS. 
-HIS PEIYATE LETTEES TO GEENVILLE. 

^^^^HE attachment of Junius to George Grenville, and 
^y^L^ Edmund Burke's dislike of him, have been often 
cited as a proof of Burke's innocence of the author- 
ship of Junius. I deny neither of these premises : 
^-£^ nor is it in the least requisite to my case that I 
should. Intimate as was the liaison between Edmund 
and WiUiam, it is neither necessary nor natural that their 
every sympathy and feeling should be in common."^'' 

It happens, however, that the disclosure by Lord Eitz- 
william, of Burke's private correspondence, affords incon- 
testible proof how completely in unison was the policy 
adopted by Burke with the Letters of Junius. 



* "Whatever might have been Edmund Burke's personal dislike to 
George Grenville, nothing can be plainer than tbat it was to the in- 
terest of the Rockingham party to uphold him the moment after the 
failure of the Graftonites to unite him to them, and theh success with 
the Bedford party. This double event took place in November and 
December, 1767. On the 18th of December, as Horace Walpole 
informs us, the people most hateful to the Burkes, including Lords 
Weymouth,. Sandwich, and Rigby, (who, as if to acclimatize their 
wrath, was made Vice Treasurer of Ireland), were included in the 
Ministry, * 

D 



34 GEOKGE GRENVILLE AND OTHERS. 

The **Grenville Correspondence'' contains three letters 
which it so happened that I did not read until I had formed 
my opinion from a consideration of the whole of William 
Burke's course, alike as Junius and in his personal relations. 
I think the reader will find in these three letters, as I did, 
a striking corroboration of my view of the peculiar j unction 
of self-seeking and real patriotism which characterizes Wil- 
liam Burke. 

In the autumn of 1767, when the negotiations were afloat 
to include Grenville, his own inclination to be included be- 
came manifest, and Walpole states that *'he (Grenville) and 
Lord Temple (his brother) attempted a private negotiation 
with Lord Hertford by the means of Calcraft and General 
Walsh ;" — that *' Lord Hertford readily consented to court 
the Grenvilles, ^' ^' ^ ^ while Grenville was preparing to 
soften the Court by affected moderation," etc. . Now this Cal- 
craft was an informant of Edmund Burke, who says in one of his 
letters — '' Calcraft gave me the enclosed names," etc. Though 
this negotiation, as we have seen, proved abortive, yet it 
amply sufficed to show William Burke the chances of Gren- 
ville' s reaccession. 

Just on the eve of the dissolution of Parliament, in the 
next year, and when the disruption of the tottering Cabinet 
might be looked for, Junius writes as follows, privately to 
George Grenville : — 

" Sir, " London, February 6th, 1768. 

"The observations contarned in the enclosed paper are thrown 
together and sent to you upon a supposition that the Tax therein 
referred to wiU make part of the budget. If Lord North should have 
fallen upon any other scheme, they ^dll be useless. But if the case 
happens, and they shall appear to have any weight, the author is 
satisfied, that no man in this country can make so able a use of them, 
or place them in so advantageous a light as Mr. Grenville. 



GEORGE GEENVILLE AND OTHERS. 35 

*' It is not, Sir, either necessary or proper to make myself known to 
you at present. Hereafter I may perhaps, claim that honor. In the 
mean time be assured that it is a voluntary disinterested attachment to 
your person founded on an esteem for your spirit and understanding, 
which has, a)id wiU for ever engage me in your cause, A number of 
late publications (falsely attributed to men of far greater talent) may 
convince you of my zeal, if not of my capacity to serve you. 

" The only condition, which I presume to make with you, is that 
you will not only not show these papers to anybody, but that you will 
never mention your having received them. "C." 

*'The enclosed paper" was an able expose to Grenville 
not only of a project of the Government to tax all goods sold 
by auction, but of the most valid objections to it, which were 
extremely well put. Its object seems to have been to show 
Grenville how useful Junius could be to him as an Under 
Secretary. 

This is a complete offer of himself to Grenville. It may 
seem, that if this were done by William Biirke, it was incon- 
sistent with his attachment to his relative. Certainly not. 
We know that precisely a similar course was adopted by 
William Burke, with Edmund Burke's complete assent, 
when the former remained in office in 1766, under Conway, 
and the Chathamites, who had at that very time behaved 
worse to Lord Eockingham and Burke, than ever George 
Grenville had done in all the encounters he had with his old, 
but always open and manly antagonist. There was nothing 
degrading to William Burke, therefore, in a wish to serve 
under George Grenville. It was natural, and his obvious 
interest. Moreover Edmund Burke had previously been at 
pains to express himself confidingly and handsomely of 
George GrenviUe, for in the '^Grenville Correspondence,'^ 
(vol. iv. p. 311, July 12th, 1768,) Mr. Whately says in a 
letter to Mr. Grenville :— 



36 GEOKGE GllE^'VlLLE AND OTHEES. 

** Wedderburn has had a long conversation with Mr. Burke, whose 
language with respect to you, he observed, was very different from 
any he had ever heard from that quarter. Mr. Burke took notice that 
the language which he heard you held, was that of a very wise man : 
the particular topic to which he alluded was, that no Minister could be 
safe, or be active, who was not sure of the King, and of the persons 
with whom he was connected, which he had been told had been a prin- 
ciple you had much insisted on lately : he added, that you were 
certainly a most excellent party man ; that your behaviour to the Bed- 
fords had proved you might be relied on ; that you would not desert 
those who would abide by you, and were steady to all your purposes : 
that it was pleasant to be connected with such a man, and the party 
would act with confidence who acted under him." 

We shall presently see that in a conversation between 
"William Burke and Dr. Hay, in July 1768, George Gren- 
ville, — who had already refused to join the patchwork Cabinet 
of the preceding winter, which included the Bedford tail, to 
the exclusion of the Eockingham party, — was mentioned by 
the latter to William Burke, ^' as a very proper matter of 
consideration for admission into a new Whig Ministry, 
(which should include the Eockingham party;) but he did 
not insist overmuch on that point." William Burke there- 
fore knew that George Grenville would probably form an 
important actor in the combination alone likely to restore his 
cousin and himself to power, and immediately afterwards 
appeared two Letters of Junius, vindicating his high claims to 
the confidence of the country, and containing in this perora- 
tion a direct allusion to his fitness for a high post: — 

"It is impossible to conceal from ourselves, that we are at this 
moment on the brink of a dreadful precipice ; the question is, whether 
we shall still submit to be guided by the hand which hath driven us to 
it, or whether we shall follow the patriot voice, * which has not ceased 
to warn us of our dangers, and which would still declare the way to 
safety and honor." (Woodfall's Junius, iii. p. 79.) 

* George Grenville' s. 



GEORGE GRENVILLE AXD OTHEIIS. 37 

On the 3rd of September, 1768, Mr. Grenville received 
another Letter from Junius, in which he says : — 

" It may not be improper you should know that the public is 
entirely mistaken with respect to the author of some late publications in 
the newspapers. Be assured that he is a man quite unknown and 
unconnected. He has attached himself to your cause and to you alone, 
upon motives, which, if he were of consequence enough to give weight 
to his judgment, would be thought as honorable to you, as they are 
truly satisfactory to himself. At a proper time he will solicit the 
honor of being known to you : he has present important reasons for 
wishing to be concealed. 

" Some late papers in which the cause of this country, and the 
defence of your character and measures have been thought not ill maiQ- 
tained ; — others signed ^Lucius,' and one or two upon a new commis- 
sion of trade, with a multitude of others, came from this hand. They 
have been taken notice of by the public. 

*^ May I plead it as a merit with you, Sir, that no motives of vanity 
should ever discover the author of this letter. If an earnest wish to 
serve you gives me any claim, let me entreat you not to suffer a hint 
of this communication to escape you to anybody. 

In the interval after the first Letter, the turn of affairs and 
the growing misgovernment of the Ministry, especially as 
to the Middlesex election, had confirmed Grenville more 
and more strongly in opposition. It had, as we have seen, 
assimilated his policy to that of the Burkes, and must have 
tended to confirm "William Eurke in his desire to make good 
his hold on Grenville. 

Lord Chatham's retirement was imminent, and a re-forma- 
tion of the Ministry with it. On the 12th of October, Chatham 
tendered his resignation through the Duke of Grafton. 

On the 20th of October, Junius writes another Letter to 
George Grenville, from which the following are extracts : — 

" The town is curious to know the author (of the Miscellaneous 
Letters.) Everybody guesses, some are quite certain, and all are mis- 



38 GEORGE GRENVILLE AND OTHERS. 

taken. Some, who bear your character, give it to the Rockinghams ; 
(a policy I do not understand ;) and Mr. Bourke denies it, as he would 
a fact, which he wished to have believed." 

" It may be proper to assure you that no man living knows, or even 
suspects the author. I have no connection with any party, except a 
voluntary attachment to your cause and person. It began with amuse- 
ment, grew into habit, was confirmed by a closer attention to your 
principles and conduct, and is now heated into passion. The Grand 
Council was mine, and I may say, with truth, ahnost everything that, for 
two years past, has attracted the attention of the public. * * * 
For want of hints, etc. I fear I frequently mistake your views, as weU 
as the true point whereon you would choose to rest the questions, in 
which your name is concerned. * * JJntil you are Minister ^ 

I must not permit myself to thinh of the honor of being hnown to you. 
When that happens, you will not find me a needy or a troublesome 



The conclusion from all this is, that William Burke, fearful 
that the Eockingham party might not regain office, and 
thinking Grenville more likely to come in without them, or 
possibly with them, was desirous to have two strings to 
his bow, and secure himself the favor of so likely a statesman, 
having established a claim and a reputation as Junius, when- 
ever it should suit his purpose to disclose his identity to the 
new Minister. Grenville' s death, in 1770, frustrated his 
purpose. 

William Burke and others had, before the summer of 
the following year, so effectually appeased the schism between 
Edmund and George Grenville, that, as we have seen, in 
September the former writes to Lord Eockingham, while 
at Billesden, Lord Vemey's seat, that '^ Lord Temple and 
Mr. Grenville seem prodigiously desirous of my paying 
them a visit;" and the visit was paid by Edmund together 
with William Burke. 

The publication of the pamphlet by Grenville, and the 
famous answer by Burke, on the ^^ State of the Tfation,'' do 



GEORGE GRENVILLE AND OTKERS. 39 

not appear to have increased their severance. Each was 
published anonymously. 

Horace Walpole thus sketches the manoeuvres of the time, 
(November, 1 768,) and strongly shows how much reason Wil- 
liam Eurke had for viewing Grenville as the coming man: — 

*' An opposition so distracted and disunited, called for recruits — at 
least, for something that might sound creditable in the ears of the 
pubhc, and keep up a spirit. Calcraft, who had the best head for in- 
trigue in the whole party, contrived a reconciliation between Lord 
Temple and Lord Chatham, as a prelude to the re-appearance of the 
latter ; and Lady Chatham was made to say, that her Lord had got an 
efficacious fit of the gout, which was to imply that his head was quite 
clear. Still this coalition in that family had no other effect than to 
alarm the Bedfords, who, concluding, according to a prevailing notion 
at that time, that nothing could withstand the union of the three 
brothers, and forgetting how lately they had deserted Grenville, or 
rather, remembering it with fear, thought the best method of securing 
themselves was to add another treachery, and betray the Duke of 
Grafton. On this they determined in a meeting at Eigby's, and sent to 
offer themselves to Grenville ; and were, as they deserved, rejected. 
Calcraft' s next step was to try through me to connect Mr. Conway with 
the Grenvilles." (Walpole's Memoirs, iii. pp. 274-5.) 

Junius (or rather "William Burke, as I think I am entitled, 
to call him,) unbiassed by the prejudice which the frequent 
tilts of Edmund Burke with Grenville caused, had formed a 
far juster appreciation than Edmund of his character, thus 
eloquently sketched in Junius' s Letter, of December 15th, 
1768 — a natural sequel to the private ones. 

" Your weight and authority in Parhament are acknowledged by the 
submission of your opponents. Your credit with the pubhc is equally 
extensive and secure, because it is founded on a system of conduct 
wisely adopted and firmly maintained. You have invariably adhered 
to one cause, one language, and when your friends deserted that cause, 
they deserted you. They who dispute the rectitude of your opinions, 
admit that your conduct has been uniform, manly, and consistent," 



40 GEORGE GRENVILLE AND OTHEHS. 

Subsequently to this period, I fail to find any open expres- 
sion of Edmund Burke's animosity to George Grenville; but in 
the following May, Lord Charlemont, an Irish nobleman, who 
had Eurke's confidence, and avows the same prejudice, 
writes to him after the famous dinner held at the Thatched 
Tavern, to celebrate the defeat of the large minority of Slay 
8th, 1769, on the affair of "Wilkes and the Middlesex 
election, and also ''for the purpose," as Lord Fitzwilliam 
tells us, '' of promoting union between the several parties 
then in opposition to government." Lord Charlemont writes 
to Burke, '' The society was increased by the hero of the 
'Observations,' (Grenville' s pamphlet.) I do, however, believe 
that this accession is in one sense of the highest importance ^ 

On the 2nd of July, 1769, Edmund Burke, in a letter to 
Lord Eockingham, not only discloses the reason why he 
himself, at that very time (in accordance with the cue he 
had received from Lord Charlemont) was endeavouring to 
parade a friendship for Grenville, whom it was daily be- 
coming more likely to attach to the Rockingham party, — but 
in it he also suggests the very course which Junius had tahen 
in 1768, and frequently afterwards tool of paying compliments 
to Grenville with that design. 

After referring to the then vexed question of " General 
Warrants," Burke writes thus : — 

" Your Lordship sees that it will require some delicacy to keep up 
that very right idea of your Lordship's, * that they should recollect to 
what party they are obhged for that determination, without seeming 
to put a studied affront on George Grenville, with whom an appearance 
of wnion at this time, and on this measure, may be very necessary.^* 
(Letter dated July 2nd, 1769. Correspondence, i. 171.) 

A week afterwards, Burke writes again to the Marquis of 
Eockingham, as follows : — 



GEORGE ORENVILLE AXD OTHERS. 41 

" The plan of the Coiiit, coinciding sufficiently with his dispositions, 
(Lord Chatham's,) but totally adverse to youi' principles and wishes, 
would be to keep the gross of the present Ministry- as the body of the 
place, and to buttress it up with the Grenvilles and the Shelbui'ne people." 

Let us now turn to Junius. !Mark the dates ! On the 
8th July, 1769, six days after the advice by Eurke to Lord 
Rockingham to keep up an appearance of friendship with 
Grenville, Junius writes as follows : — 

" Lord Chatham, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Eockingham, have suc- 
cessively had the honor to be dismissed for preferring their duty, as 
servants of the public, to those compliances which were expected from 
their station. ******* Lord Bute 

found no resource of dependence or security in the proud, imposing 
superiority of Lord Chatham's abilities, the shrewdy inflexible judgment 
of Mr. Grenville^ nor in the mild, but determined integrity of Lord 
Eockingham." (AYoodfaU's Junius, vol. i. 506-7.) 

In September, Burke moreover discovered that Grenville, 
though he had ^^ originally entertained doubts '' about Burke's 
pet scheme of petitions respecting rights of election, was then 
entirely in favour of a petition to the Crown, etc. *' I confess 
myself/' adds Burke, '^ entirely of the same opinion." 

Grenville, though he opposed "Wilkes, equally combated 
the unconstitutional outrage by which the House of Com- 
mons excluded him. Grenville' s character indeed fully 
justified the praise Junius bestowed on him. He was a 
stranger to Junius, as he tells us, and he was also personally 
unacquainted with "William Burke : who had, nevertheless, 
rightly understood him. Without genius, and deficient in 
rhetorical power, he was respectable in every relation of 
statesmanship. A severe and consistent economist, thoroughly 
versed in the business of Parliament, equally devoid of cor- 
ruption and courtesy, he vindicated the innate power of 
principle, and enforced respect in times little accustomed to 



42 GEORGE GRENVILLE AND OTHERS. 

give ascendancy to virtue. His chief fault was his utter 
disregard of the urbanities due to the King. He had, doubt- 
less, no easy course to steer, but his conduct was unjustifiable 
to his Sovereign, even according to his own account of it. 
I fear that this blemish in his career nowise lessened his 
merits in the eyes of the Burkes. 

Junius' s mention of Bourke's^' denial of the authorship 
happened to be the exact truth, as Dr. Markham's and 
Townshend's letters show, — and William had a very good 
right to refer to it, if he wished to persuade Grenville, as 
he must have done, that he was not Grenville' s opponent, as 
Edmund had been. 

It is worthy of note that Junius, in these three Letters to 
Grenville, presents himself as a man less eminent than those 
to whom the authorship of the letters had been then assigned : 
and such was the case with William Burke. It was equally 
true that he was connected with no party : he had, in effect, 
ceased to be so from the time he held office under a Ministry 
hostile to Lord Eockingham ; and yet he wrote in support 
of the Eockingham interest. 'So other man was in a similar 
position. William Burke, having then made money in the 
funds, was, as he says, in independent circumstances. 

If it be true, as it doubtless was, that Junius had ^' writ- 
ten almost everything which had attracted attention for two 
years past," then there could have been no other letters 
attack mg Lord Hillsborough, in the same year, and just before 
this time, but his own ; for they attracted so much attention^ 
that on that ground they were singled out for mention by 
Walpole,who affirms that they were written by William Burke : 
a statement to which I shall again refer in Chapter IX. 

* It was often so spelled, though not by Edmund Burke. 



YIII. 




LOED CHATHA^I, JUJ^IUS, AND THE 
BrEKES. 

S the Earl of Chatham was the great political feature 
of his times, and since the conduct of Junius towards 
him was strange, be Junius who he may, and inex- 
plicable unless he were a Biu'ke, I must give a 
separate chapter to the relation between them. 
It may be thought that in two or thi'ee of his 
early Miscellaneous Letters abeady cited from "Woodfall's 
edition, Junius deals too harshly with Lord Chatham. Like 
Burke, he had however at that time changed his opinion of him. 
^'I cannot admit " he writes to the '^ Public Advertiser,'' on 
May 28th, 1767, ^^ I cannot admit that because Mr. Pitt was 
respected and honored a few years ago, the Earl of Chatham, 
therefore, deserves to be so now.'' ^ 

Chatham's conduct had lichly deserved the opprobrium 
which Junius cast upon it. When every motive of patriot- 
ism and affinity of principle manifestly demanded of him 
a generous support of the Eockingham party, he repelled 
them for no other assignable cause than his own craving 
ambition to inile alone. Soon after he had assumed the Pre- 
miership, he left his turbulent and anomalous Ministry for 
whole months in a state of anarchy disastrous to the interests 
of the country — shutting himself up at Bath, denying access 
to them, and withholding even the expression of his wishes. 



44 LOKI) CHATHAM, JUNIUS, ANT) THE BURKES. 

Ill health was no plea for conduct so outrageous. The retention 
of power which he was utterly incapable of wielding, con- 
demns him. 

Lord Macaulay himself very powerfully confirms the 
justice of censuring Chatham, even in the essay devoted to 
his praise ; and shows the deep cause which Burke and the 
Eockinghams had to act the part of censors with unsparing 
severity. — '^ He had deeply injured them, and in injuring 
them, had deeply injured his country. "When the balance 
was trembling between them and the Court, he had thrown 
the whole weight of his genius, of his renown, and of his 
popularity, into the scale of misgovernment.*' To Burke, 
Lord Macaulay proceeds to attribute a prominent share of 
the resentment of his party. — ^^It must be added that 
many eminent members of the party still retained a bitter 
recollection of the asperity and disdain with which they had 
been treated by him at the time when he assumed the 
direction of affairs. It is clear from Burke's pamphlets and 
speeches, and still more clear from his private letters and 
from the language which he held in conversation, that he 
regarded Chatham with a feeling not far removed from dis- 
like.'' Mr. Mstcknight goes far further and says — *'It is not 
wonderful that when Burke saw the blessed work of recon- 
ciliation and justice which Lord Eockingham and himself 
had striven to perfect altogether destroyed by the folly, in- 
competence, and instability of the men whom Chatham 
had introduced into the Administration, that this burning 
sense of injury should have grown fiercer and fiercer within 
him, as he was compelled to suppress its outward manifesta- 
tionr (Yol. i. p. 244.) 

Thus were Junius and the Burkes possessed of similar feelings 
towards Chatham, nor does the fraternity between them end 



LOKD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE liUKKKS. 45 

here. It finds utterance in terms strikingly expressive of the 
same antipathies, on the same grounds, and at the same times. 
It is not till Lord Chatham had long surrendered office, (on 
July 8th, 1769,) that Junius vouchsafes to do ojpen homage 
even to the superiority of his abilities : nor is it till two years 
later, (August 13th, 1771,) that the praises of Chatham are 
extorted from him. We shall see presently under what sig- 
nificant conjuncture of circumstances. 

The most difficult task for those who would defend the 
consistency of Junius is one which seems never to have oc- 
curred to any of them. It is to reconcile his Private Letter, 
of January 2nd, 1768 to Lord Chatham, with all the well 
merited censure, written only a few months before, and con- 
tinued in a Letter (ISTo. XI.) into the previous month of 
December. For though the probable retirement of Lord 
Chatham from his office might abate the wrath, and silence 
the attacks, of the great unknown, it certainly could not alter 
his estimate of the character he had been at pains to blacken, 
or reconcile it with the following exordium in this singular 
Private Letter : — 

"My Lord — If I were to give way to the sentiments of respect 
which I have always entertained for your character, or to the warmth 
of my attachment to your person, I should write a longer letter than 
your Lordship would have time or inclination to read." 

The Letter then proceeds to tell his Lordship, — what he 
probably knew fuU well long before Junius, — the trickeries 
of the Chancellor, the ingratitude of JN'orthington, the 
puerility of Conway, and the manoeuvring of the Duke of 
Grafton and the Bedfords, — te^ Bute, Consule ! 

The object was palpably to confirm, and to ripen the 
disgust of Chatham with his colleagues into a rupture with 
them : and thus to bar their next advances, and open the way 



46 LOUD CHATHAM, JU:N1US, AND THE BUKKES. 

for afterwards securing his adhesion to a purer Government. 
The end was good, but the means were indefensibly disin- 
genuous : for Junius could not have felt the esteem he ex- 
pressed. My belief is, that he never intended Chatham or 
the world to know the identity of the authorship of the Mis- 
cellaneous Letters, under other signatures, with the far more 
studied compositions of Junius. He took a pride in the 
reputation of that great name, and it is noteworthy that his 
first use of it was in this Private Letter to Lord Chatham : 
and it is not inconsistent with the subsequent mention of 
Lord Chatham by Junius under that signature. It will 
be shown what good cause the Burkes had to change 
their tone towards him. 

In his first Miscellaneous Letter, Junius merely exhibits 
his consistent love of the constitution by charging Lord 
Chatham wdth the principle implied in his outrageous speech 
during the Eockingham Ministry, on the general right of 
the Colonists to resist taxation by the mother country, when 
advocating the repeal of the Stamp Duty which George 
Grenville had recklessly imposed on the Americans : — '' I re- 
joice, said he, that America has resisted, ^^ Seeing that the 
absolute right of Great Britain to make laws to bind the 
Colonies and people of America ^^ in all cases whatsoever " 
was then part of the statute law of the realm, (6 Geo. IIL 
c. xii. s. 1.) and that the resistance of the Americans which 
Chatham extolled was an act of rebellion, he fully deserved 
impeachment for his conduct. 'So constitutional lawyer has 
since upheld his doctrine, and Junius nowise oversteps the 
limits of just censure in imputing to him a readiness '^ to 
declare himself the patron of sedition, and a zealous advo- 
cate for rebellion . ' ' 

Junius having attacked Lord Chatham, directly or indi- 
rectly, up to three days before his retirement from office, 



LORD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE BUKKES. 4 / 

then writes on the 19th of October, 1768, that of '^ the Earl 
of Chatham he had much to say, but it were inhuman to 
persecute, when Providence has marked out the example to 
mankind. '^ 

Chatham retired despite the vehement remonstrance of 
the King. *^ What was done thenceforward, he was," (as 
Lord llahon says,) ^* so far from directing, that he scarcely 
knew; he had fallen as a dead body falls, blind, unheed- 
ing, unstiiTed : "* but not without a dying kick at his 
quondam fiiends, — for he wrote to the Duke of Grafton, cen- 
suring in significant terms his breach with Shelbume and 
the dismissal of Amherst. After the year 1768, Junius ceased 
to abuse him. After eight months more of gout and seclusion, 
Chatham reappears again at Court in July, 1 769 ; and, says 
Mr. llassey: — 

" After the levee he had an audience of the King, by whom he was 
received with the most marked expressions of regard and favor. But 
His Majesty had httle encouragement, from this interview, to hope that 
Ms system of government would receive the sanction or support of his 
great subject. Chatham spoke of the measures which had been adopted, 
especially of the proceedings against Wilkes, with disapprobation, and 
plainly intimated his purpose of opposing the Government." 

In the same month Junius first begins publicly to speak 
well of Lord Chatham, praising him for preferring his duty 
to compliances expected from his position, and complimenting, 
as we have seen, the proud, imposing superiority of his 
abilities. 

Lord Chatham acted in full accordance with the intention 
he had expressed to the King. He cold shouldered the Duke 
of Grafton, he foregathered with the GrenviUes, and jom^neyed 
with his whole family to Stowe ^' in a jim whiskey drawn by 

* Chatham Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 343. 



48 LOKD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE BURKES. 

two horses, one before the other, '^' which he drove himself,'' 
(as Burke tells us at the end of the same July) ^'his train of 
two coaches and six, with twenty servants male and female," 
accompanying him. He reappears in Parliament in the 
following January; he censures the Address; inveighs 
against the seating of Luttrell in the place of "Wilkes; sup- 
ports the faltering onslaught of Lord Eockingham upon the 
Duke of Grafton, on the 22nd of January, touching the Public 
Discontents ; advocates an enlargement of the County Ee- 
presentation, — and in short, by his repeated attacks upon 
the ill-fated Duke of Grafton, drives him to resign. '^Thus," 
as Lord Mahon justly remarks, ^^ no sooner had Lord Chatham 
emerged from his retirement and raised his voice against the 
Ministry than the Ministry crumbled to pieces.'' He thus 
consummated the exact object which Junius had so long 
labored to achieve. The Eockinghams were however as far 
from office as ever : and the antagonism of the Burkes con- 
tinues against Lord JSTorth and his coUeagaes. 

The busy enmity of Chatham to the ^^ powers that be" 
did not terminate with the downfall of their great enemy. 
^^ He brought forward several uncompromising motions against 
the Government," as Lord Mahon tells us. JN'ext Session he 
assailed them for their cowardice in the affair of Port Egmont 
and the conduct of Spain. JSTo speeches were more vehement 
than his, and he again attacked the Government in the matter 
of the contest between the two Houses and with the City of 
London in 1771. 

Up to this time, though Lord Chatham had thus furthered 
the aims of Junius, not a syllable of praise had escaped him 
in his published Letters, except the few curt acknowledg- 

* Is this the grandfatlier of tandems ? 



LORD CHATHAM, .TUN1U.S, AND THE BURKES. '19 

mcnts of* his superior abilities in July, 1769. Why was 
this? If Francis were Junius, what conceivable motive 
could have induced him to withold praise of his own early 
benefactor, now powerfully abetting his political antipathies 
and furthering his personal aims : But how if Junius were a 
man tied to the fortunes of Edmund Burke, and bound no less 
by affection than interest jurm^e in verha ^nagistrif Let us 
turn to the private expressions of Edmund Burke's feelings to 
Lord Chatham during this same eventful period, and follow 
the phases of its change from hatred to tolerance, from tole- 
rance to esteem. 

On July 9th, 1769, Burke depicts him ''as talking some 
significant pompous creeping explanatory ambiguous matter 
in the true Chathamic style " to the King. In the following 
October he finds that Lord Chatham has spoken ''in the 
highest terms " of Burke's friend. Admiral Keppel. But his 
opinions towards the Eockinghams were "reserved." (Cor- 
respondence, vol. i. p. 195.) Twenty days later Burke says, 
" perhaps it might be as well not to suggest anything of our 
dislike of that person (the Earl) to any one of the sacred 
band." (p. 204.) Then follows Burke's famous description 
of him as "hovering in air over all parties, to souse down 
where the prey may prove the best." (p. 206.) In the 
IN'ovember following, Burke tells Lord Eockingham that 
Chatham was represented to him by Lord Temple as "violent " 
against the Ministry; " determined to come out on the first 
day of the Session;" that the Eockinghams and other great 
Whig families ought to take the lead in such (a new) Adminis- 
tration, etc. (p. 215.) Afterwards he says, " I saw Keppel, 
who has received a much more direct message from Lord 
Chatham than the former, ^' ^ containing a 

strong declaration of his resolution never to act, but with 

E 



50 LOUD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE BUKKES. 

your Lordship and your system, with many high praises of 
both/' (p. 217.) A little later we find that he '' by no means 
thinks that Chatham goes so entirely with the Grenvilles as 
they think, or that he will make himself* so subservient to 
their aggrandisement as they could wish/' (p. 219.) 

This is in perfect keeping with the reticence of Junius, 
then and from the preceding July, respecting Chatham. 
Edmund Burke, with waning prejudice, still distrusted him. 
It is not until August 15th, 1770, that Edmund Burke 
commits himself to any unqualified praise of Chatham, and 
then to his friend Shackelton he writes— ^^ Lord C. behaved 
handsomely in rejecting the idea of a triennial Parliament 
which the jury of London, at the instigation of the '' Bill of 
Eights " men, thought proper to fasten upon him in order to 
slur us." (p. 230.) In the following month, Burke writes to 
Lord Eockingham that Chatham '^ agrees with our idea of 
taking up two points of the rights of election, and the bring- 
ing evil councillors to justice." (p. 241.) Such being the 
change of Burke's political feeling towards Chatham, it is not 
surprising that he should, though prompted by poHcy per- 
haps more than afiection, have complimented him in the 
House in 1771, as '^ a great man, who, though not a member 
of the Cabinet, seems to hold the key of it," etc. 

On August 1 3th, in the same year, Junius, hitherto silent 
regarding Lord Chatham, pronounces this celebrated panegy- 
ric — which, as long as our language lives, will be admired 
for its classical grandeur : — 

" It is not in the little censure of Mr. Home to deter me from doing 
signal justice to a man, who, I confess, has grown upon my esteem. 
As for the common, sordid views of avarice, or any purpose of vulgar 
ambition, I question whether the applause of Junius would be of ser- 
vice to Lord Chatham. Jfy vote will hardly recommend. him to an 



LOKD CHATHA3J:, JUNIUS, AND THE BUKKES. 51 

increase of bis pension, or to a seat in the Cabinet. But if his ambition 
be upon a level with his understanding ; — if he judges of what is truly 
honorable for himself, with the same superior genius, which animates 
and directs him, to eloquence in debate, to wisdom in decision — even the 
pen of Junius shall contribute to reward him. Recorded honors shall 
gather round his monument, and thicken over him. It is a solid fabric, 
and ^vill support the laui^els that adorn it. — I am not conversant in the 
lang-uage of panegyric. — These praises are extorted from me ; but they 
will wear well, for they have been dearly earned." 

Junius continued his praise of Lord Chatham in 1771 pub- 
licly, and also privately to "Wilkes. Thus, just in proportion 
as Lord Chatham's conduct became serviceable to the Burkes, 
and as Edmund Burke's old enmity passed away, did Junius 
relent towards him and praise him. 

I have enlarged on the relation of Junius to Chatham, 
because the necessity (in 1 767) under which the Eockinghams 
and Burkes felt to damage him, as the past foe and present 
obstacle to their power, called Junius forth : his first known 
Letter having been written exclusively to assail Lord Chatham. 

In those days, when Burke's grand intellect and vast capa- 
cities gave him a moral ascendancy which has dignified his 
name, there was no man living who could have appeared to 
him either so gifted, or so empowered, as to present a for- 
midable barrier to the success of his political ambition — • 
except Chatham, who had contrived among statesmen, 

Alev api(TTev£LV, kol v7reipo')(ov tp^^Evai aXXiov. 
He captivated the people, he awed the senate, and he spell- 
bound the King. I\o one indeed who reads the history of 
those days can doubt that had he, at any hour while Junius was 
attacking him, or during many months previously, thrown 
his own weight into the scale of the high principles and 
respectability of the Eockingham party, — instead of support- 
ing a motley group devoid of either, — the Marquis of Rock- 



52 LORD CHATHAM, JUNIUS, AND THE BUKKES. 

ingham must have been the alternative of the King, and 
Burke have led the Commons.^-' 

He and his cousin therefore had very good reason to wrestle 
with this giant foe, while he was such; and to defer a return 
to amity and alliance until Chatham had fully proved the 
earnestness of his subsequent co-operation with their policy 
and interests. 

* An anecdote related by Lord Mahon shows that this was Burke's 
high, but perfectly justifiable ambition. A Committee of the Privy 
Council was summoned : — 

*^The public expectation was eager, and the Council Chamber 
thronged. Among others struggling, for the most part vainly, for 
admittance, was Dr. Priestley, who has left us a lively description of 
the scene. ^ We shall never get through,' cried he to Mr. Burke. Mr. 
Burke said, ' Give me your arm,' and locking it fast in his, he soon 
made his way to the door of the Privy Council. I then said * Mr. 
Burke, you are an excellent leader.' He replied, * I wish other persons 
thought so too.' " (Lord Mahon, vol. v. p. 326.) 




IX. 



ATTACKS OF JlJXirS OX LOED HILLSBOEOrOH. 

WALPOLE'S TESTIMOXT THAT ^VILLIAM BUEKE 

TTAS THE ASSAILEE. 




^HILST the reasons I hare named rendered it the 
policy of the Burkes to attack and weaken the 
Government in 1768, an occasion for doing so was 
offered by the ti^eatment of Sir Jeffeiy Amherst. 
The gravamen of his grievance was, that Lord 
Hillsborough having asked him — in consequence of 
the dissatisfaction of the Virginians at his holding the sine- 
cure post of their Governor whilst non-resident in Yii'ginia, 
— to resign his post, before his answer was given, Lord Boute- 
tort (a courtier) was appointed in his stead. Conflicting 
statements are given of the facts of this case. Mr. !Massey, 
for instance, holds that Amherst gave frivolous reasons for 
resisting the wishes of the Government, that a full equiva- 
lent by way of pension was offered him, and that he com- 
plained only as a means of making terms with the Government. 
Lord Mahon, agreeing rather with Lord Chatham and Junius, 
and citing the charges of the latter, inclines to think that 
Amherst '^ might be justly offended at a point of form," and 
that the case was not that Virginia wanted a Governor, but 
that a Court favorite wanted a salary. It may so have been, 
and there is no ground for doubting that Junius thought so ; 



54 ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LORD HILLSBOROUGH. 

inasmuch as the Ministry were not reputed for redressing 
abuses without some very clear view to their own interest. 
Junius accordingly devoted about a dozen Letters, from August 
to October, some personally addressed to the Earl of Hills- 
borough, the new Secretary of State for America; and all of 
them making Lord Hillsborough's treatment of Amherst the 
chief point of the strictures launched at himself and his 
colleagues. 

I need not dwell on these Letters : they are one and all in 
perfect uniformity with the design of Junius and the conduct 
of Eurke on this point, from first to last."^ But it happens 
that those attacking Lord Hillsborough are the subject of 
direct evidence that William Eurkfe was Junius. 

Horace Walpole, in his ^'Memoirs of theEeign," says that 

* The proofs that Junius was aiming at the restoration of the 
Rockinghams, backed by Grenville, are constantly peeping out. We find 
him in one of his Letters in 1778 saying, " If you will now permit me 
to offer my opinion of the great persons, under whose Administration 
we are reduced to this deplorable state, the public will be enabled to judge 
whether these are the men most likely to relieve us from it." (Wood- 
fall's Junius, iii. p. 166.) 

To George GrenviUe he addresses this aphorism ; — " FoUy cannot 
long take the ]^as of wisdom, and ignorance sooner or later must sub- 
mit to experience." 

To Lord Hillsborough he says, with equal justice ; and with still 
more direct allusion to the goal of his efforts : — 

"You have sent Sir Jeffery Amherst to the plough. You have left 
him poor in every article of which a false fawning Minister could 
deprive him ; — but you have left him rich in the esteem, the love, and 
veneration of his country. You cannot now recall him by any offer of 
wealth or honors. Yet I foretell that a time will come, when you 
yourself will be the cause of his return. Proceed my Lord, as you have 
begun, and you will soon reduce this country to an extremity, in which 
the wisest and best subjects must be called upon, and must\>Q employed. 
Till then enjoy your triumph." (Woodfall's Jimius, vol. iii. p. 155.) 



ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LORD HILLSBOKOUGH. 00 

" Sir Jeffery's intrinsic merit, the removal of him in favor of 
a Court tool, and his scorn of the pension, immediately pre- 
sented him as a beloved victim to the opposition." ''Lord 
Hillsborough, in particular, was acrimoniously pursued by the 
younger Burlce in many publications. " (' 'History of the Eeign 
of George III.," vol. iii. 240.) This Mr. Macknight cites, 
but particularizes the fact more strongly thus : — "During 
the autumn, (1768,) William Burke strongly attacked Lord 
Hillsborough in the Neiospapers for his incapacity and ser- 
vility." (Vol. i. p. 302.) 

The periods named therefore correspond. I find that these 
were the only Letters of note attacking Lord Hillsborough at 
the time. J^or indeed is it probable that Walpole would 
have noticed any but the most prominent and effective Letters, 
even supposing there were others, omitting mention of these 
most powerful ones, which called forth several answers from 
the friends of Lord Hillsborough. 

I have already shown that these Letters were the Letters 
of Junius,— by the undoubted evidence of Woodfall's Editor, 
corroborated by the recent researches among the Grenville 
Papers. If, therefore, Walpole's unqualified assertion, to- 
gether with Mr. Macknight's, be not a fiction, the case is 
proved that William Burke was Junius. 



THE ^^ NULLUM TEMPUS" ACT. 



^N 1767, the Government committed an historical outrage 
on the rights of property, in the spoliation, as Mr. Massey 
justly terms it, of the Duke of Portland's estate in the 
manor of Penrith, and for an electioneering purpose. 
The estate was large, and gave the possessor great elec- 
tioneering influence. The Duke of Portland was a Whig, 
and a grant of it was passed to Sir James Lowther, the Earl 
of Bute's son-in-law, on the strength of the old exploded 
maxim of Nullum tempus occurrit regi, for this manor had 
once been Crown property. 

This gross act became public early in the following year, 
and, as Mr. Macknight observes, ^' alarmed all the aristo- 
cracy, and particularly offended Burlce and the Eockingham 
party." (Vol. i. p. 289.) The reason why it especially 
offended the Burkes is further explained in this note by 
Lord Eitzwilliam, in the ''Correspondence,'' vol. i. p. 158 : — 
''"WiUiam Henry, third Duke of Portland, whose distin- 
guished friendship Mr. Burke had the happiness to obtain 
at an early period of his public life, and to preserve to his 
last hour, and which he returned with feelings of the highest 
respect and affection.' ' Moreover the Duke of Portland visited 
Burke about this time. 

Immediately upon the disclosure of the treatment the 
Duke had received, and during the months of February, 



TUE ^'nullum TEMPUs" ACT. 57 

^farch, April, and May, there appeared in Nos. XIII, XIV, 
XIX, and XXI, of the Miscellaneous Letters of Junius, 
nghteous invectives assailing the Government for this act of 
fraud, plunder, and persecution. 

The whole case against the Government was thus put 
before the public by Junius, in his Letter of the 12th of 
May, 1768, in one of those terse and lucid statements which 
very few men in those days could write with like effect : — 

" The charge against them is not that they have granted to Sir James 
Lowther an estate which, in law, is the right of the Duke of Portland ; 
but that they partially, and in many parts of the proceeding, sur- 
reptitiously, upon the bare report of a subordinate officer, without 
suffering his vouchers to be examined, without hearing counsel, or 
allowing time or means of defence to the party, or of due uiformation 
to themselves, have violated the equitable and presumptive rights of 
long and undisputed possession for the purposes of undue influence at 
an election, and of paying a base court to a clandestine and dangerous 
power." (Woodfall's Junius, vol. iii. p. 52.) 

This oppressive act did not end, as wras expected by the 
Duke of Portland's friends, with the electioneering object it 
was first designed to serve. They were mistaken. The 
whole power of the Government then centred in the Duke 
of Grafton, and the measure of persecution was in nowise 
adequate to his taste for oppression, or his servility to the 
Eute faction. Advantage was taken of a provision in Sir 
George Saville's '^ Quieting Eill," which excepted from the 
saving clauses in this renewal of the Statute of James, "^ such 
claims as might be prosecuted within a year. '^ No sooner" 
says Mr. Massey, ^' was the Eill passed than litigations were 
commenced in the most vexatious form by Sir James Lowther. 
A single action would have sufficed to try the right ; but 

* An Act which Hmited retrospectively only the right of the Crown to 
the recovery of property within sixty years after dispossession. 



58 THE '^NULLUM TEMPUS " ACT. 

Lowther caused four hundred ejectments to be served in one 
day on the tenants of the Duke, besides which he brought 
forty actions, and filed fifteen bills in equity against his 
Grace. '^ '^' "^ '^ Never, since feudal license, had dis- 
may been so widely spread." This gentle Earonet is described 
as having ^^aff'ected the most revolting manners of the mid- 
dle ages. His conduct exhibited the coarse tyranny and 
lawless rapine of a feudal baron, without the least tincture 
of the chivalry and romance which sometimes partially 
redeemed that character." This amiable person was forth- 
with selected, together with Mr. Pitt, by George the Third, 
as the only two commoners worthy of being rewarded with 
Earldoms for their respective services. 

Junius not only thus did admirable service to the just 
rights of property in castigating the culprits, but also to 
political morals by exposing the gross breach of his word by 
the Duke of Grafton : who had positively promised the Duke 
of Portland, that no steps should be taken till his Grace's 
title had been stated, reported on, and fully considered, etc. 
The Premier had been defended for the gross breach of this 
promise by some literary minion of the Duke of Grafton on 
the principles of what he termed '^ the soundest casuists " and 
Junius retorts thus : — 

*' I am not deeply read in authors of that professed title, but I 
remember seeing Bassambaum, Saurez, Molina, and a score of other 
Jesuitical books, burnt at Paris for their sound casuistry/ by the hands of 
the common hangman. I do not know that they have yet found their 
way to England, unless perchance it be to the hbrary of his Grace of 
Grafton, where they probably stand with the chapter of promises dog- 
eared down for the perusal of scrupulous statesmen." 

Lest this attack should be attributed merely to Junius* s 
love of personalities, it is well to remark that the writer he 
attacks admits that the promise was inadvertently given by 



THE ^^ NULLUM TEMPUS " ACT. 59 

the Duke of Grafton ; but then, says he, '^ since he was the 
King's servant, and had no title to the making this promise, 
he perceived he was not in honor bound to adhere to it/' 

I have dwelt somewhat in detail on this episode in the 
Grafton dynasty, because, in order to connect Junius with 
the Burkes, it is helpful, if not needful, to exculpate him 
from the charge of reckless venom against the objects of his 
attacks ; and thus from a moral depravity which nowise 
tainted the Burke character : and in order to do this, it is 
an essential preliminary to remove all question of the base- 
ness of the Duke of Grafton : for nearly the whole of 
the bitterest of Junius' s Letters were aimed at him, or at 
those who directly ministered to his disastrous influence, and 
abetted his reckless oppressions. 

A Letter of Junius occurs in this part of the series, (No. 
XX.) which, together with the above-named attack on the 
Duke of Grafton for his duplicity, affords ample refutation 
of the assertion of Mr. Massey — that the grounds of the 
fierce invectives of Junius on the Duke were chiefly his 
"illegitimate descent from Charles the Second, his marriage 
with the cousin of a man who had debauched his wife, and 
the mature age and faded charms of his mistress." 

Junius seldom attacked the private vices of his opponents ; 
but when the falsehood of the Duke added personal treachery 
to the robbery of his kinsman's oldest friend, — and when 
the Premier, his wife being present, so far forgot the out- 
ward decencies expected even from dissolute Ministers, as to 
parade his mistress at the opera, calling for her carriage, 
and escorting her to it, in a throng of the first people in the 
kingdom, — and such were the " chief grounds " of Junius' s 
censures on his Grace's behaviour, — it is wrong in an histo- 



60 



THE -^NULLUM TEMPUS " ACT. 



lian who values his reputation for accuracy to ignore the 
gravest imputations of Junius, and to declare the rest, 
^^ frivolous,'' '^absurd," and '^futile." 

The public conduct and manners of the First Minister of a 
King so virtuous as George the Third, should at least have 
jeen free from acts of treachery, and a display of profligacy, 
suitable only to the veracity of the Stuarts and to royal 
morals in the days of jS"ell Gwyn. 





XI. 

DR. HAY CONFIDES TO WILLIAM BUEKE THE 

MINISTERIAL TACTICS OE 1768.— JUNIUS ON 

THE AMERICAN QUESTION. 

^URING the month of July, 1768, WiUiam Eurke had 
a '^ great deal of very serious conversation " with Dr. 
Hay, M.P. for Sandwich, a man then in the confidence 
of the Bedford party and who afterwards obtained 
the Judgeship of the Admiralty under them. This 
conversation forms the subject of a long letter, dated 
July 18th, 1768, in which it is detailed by Edmund Burke 
to Lord Rockingham, (i. Correspondence, 158.) This let- 
ter is very important, because it proves incontestably that 
though William Burke had ceased to be in office, he had 
the means of private information of the proceedings of the- 
Ministry. It was then made known to William Burhe 
first, that ^^the Bedfords were horridly frightened at the 
adhesion of Lord Camden to the Duke of Grafton, and 
^ found things not quite ripe at present for bringing in Gren- 
ville,' though he was mentioned by Dr. Hay as a very proper 
matter of consideration : that they wished Lord Rockingham 
to be at the head of the Treasury, but ' lamented the exclu- 
sive and prescriptive spirit of his party which he feared 
would make such an union difficult.' " He spoke of the Min- 
istry as a strange, incoherent, composition that certainhj 



62 DE. HAY CONFIDES TO WILLIAM BURKE 

ivould not stand. He hinted at a ^'middle man," whom 
Edmund Burke thought must be Lord Gower, one of the 
Bedford party and then President of the Council. He also 
went so far as to name the Duke of Northumberland as a 
proper person for the Treasury, in case of the Duke of Grafton 
going oat. *^ Will. Burke '^ (says Edmund) ''told him 
that he did not conceive what man they could name so wor- 
thy as your Lordship of the joint confidence of parties, who 
had never been known to deceive any party or any indivi- 
dual.' '' 

On this conversation Edmund Burke makes this com- 
ment : — '' The truth is the Bedfords will never act any part 
either fair or amicable with your Lordship or your friends, 
until they see you in a situation to give the law to them, and 
all attempts before that time will be not only useless but 
dangerous." 

J^ow this being the opinion of Edmund Burke, and "William 
Burke having learnt the inherent weakness of the Ministry, 
the untrustworthiness of the Bedford party, and that the 
sole hope for the restoration of the Eockinghams was in the 
previous discomfiture alike of the Grafton and Bedford sec- 
tions, let us see whether the course thereupon taken by Junius 
was not precisely such as. William Burke, co-operating with 
Edmund Burke, would have an obvious and direct interest 
in taking. ' 

This confidential communication of Cabinet news to Wil- 
liam Burke was, for some reason, habitual. He seems to 
have been a favorite confidant of Ministers in perplexity. 
As early as July, 1767, Charles Lloyd writes to George, 
Grenville with a lot of information which he gives as being 
'' beyond the level of common discourse," and which William 
Burke had just confided to him as the purport of a conference 



THE MINISTEEIAL TACTICS. 63 

the day before, between the Duke of Grafton and Lord llock- 
ingham, on Ministerial arrangements. (** Gicnville Corres- 
pondence, iv. p. 54.) 

The letter informing Lord Eockingham of the conversation 
with Dr. Hay was written on the 1 8th of July, 1768. On the 
next day Junius falls foul of Lord Hillsborough, (Miscella- 
neous Letter XX YI.) just then appointed to the Board of 
Trade, and returns to the charge on the 23rd of the same 
month. On the 30th he writes again one of his careful and 
elaborate attacks on the Government, directed against their 
most vulnerable point, — the Taxation of the American Colonies. 

^' We find ourselves,^' says Junius, ^' at last reduced to the 
dreadful alternative of either making war upon our Colonies, or 
of suffering them to erect themselves into independent states.'^ 
Mr. Conway, he adds, since last December (1767) ^^has, in 
the face of the House of Commons, defended the resistance 
of the Colonies upon what he called revolution principles. '^ 
CWoodfall's Junius, vol. iii. p. 76.) 

He also speaks of the ^'fate of Great Britain as thrown 
upon the hazard of a die by a weak, distracted, worthless 
Ministry, "^ for whom an honest man must always express 
all the indignation he feels." 

* A foohsh footnote by Woodfall's Editor, vol. iii. p. 74, applies all 
this to the Rockingliam Admiaistration, whicli, as ke says, ''lasted 
from July lOtk, 1765, to July SOth, 1766," whereas Junius expressly 
states in the beginning of tkis Letter that ^^it is not many months since 
you gave me the opportunity of demonstratuig," etc., that "the hopes 
which some men seemed to entertain with regard to America were 
without a shadow of foundation, etc." And these men he immediately 
says " may have but a little time to live in office," etc. Now this pre- 
vious Letter is referred to by another foot note (page 73) as being Letter 
X., written on 19th December 1767, which treats solely of the succes- 



64 JUNIIJS ON THE AMERICAN QUESTION. 

Junius concludes this Letter after an admirable and 
damaging expose of the Colonial mismanagement ; and of the 
maladresse of the persons '^ who have professed themselves the 
patrons of lenient moderate measures until the very names of 
lenity and moderation became ridiculous.'' 

On the 5th of August following, we find Junius again 
attacking the Government in the person of Lord Hillsborough, 
Secretary to the Colonies, for his treatment of Sir Jefi'ery 
Amherst. 

The very next day he is at them again, on their treatment 
of the American Colonies, and in defence of Mr. Grenville, 
then in opposition. The following passage identifies the 
views of Junius and Burke on this subject: — 

" For the matter of expediency, an advocate for the present Ministry 
seems to me to arraign his patrons when he argues against it (the right 
of taxing the Colonies.) One part of them uniformly concurred with 
Mr. Grenville in forming the stamp act, and in opposing the repeal of 
it. The other to serve the purposes of party, repealed that act, 

sors to the Rockingham Ministry. It is this which probably led Mr. 
Macknight into the mistake that Junius said " the Eockingham Ministry 
were intrinsically feeble and came in under the mediation of Lord Bute," 
etc. He distinctly states whom it is that he attacks in this very Letter 
of the 3 th of July, in the following: — " From the first appearance of that 
rebellious spirit which has spread itself all over the Colonies, the chief 
members of the present Ministry were the declared advocates of America." 
The Letter X., to which the Editor refers us, is that, moreover, in 
which Junius deprecates indeed the conduct held towards America 
throughout ; but he especially denounces " a particular set of men base 
and treacherous enough to have enlisted under the banners of a lunatic 
to whom they sacrificed their honor, their conscience, and their country, 
in order to carry a point of party and to gratify their personal rancour," 
etc. Woodfall's Editor tells us in a note that this ''lunatic" is Lord 
Chatham. Mr. Macknight will certainly not maintain that it meant 
Lord Rockinaham. 



JUNIUS ON THE AMERICAN QUESTION. 65 

yet shewed by their conduct that they approved of the cquita- 
able principle on which it was foimded, that America should con- 
tribute a little to the support of the public expense. The repeal of the 
stamp act has been followed by other acts more offensive to the colonies, 
more directly exerting the right of taxation, and which will hardly be 
executed without some extraordinary efforts on the part of Government. 
"Was the act for suspending the assembly of Xew York recommended by 
Mr. Gren^dlle? was it he who advised the duties on paper, glass, etc., 
imported into the colonies r Xo, Sir, his successors have paid him the 
highest compnment by imitating the system which they had affected to 
condemn ; and in fact they have carried his principles further than he 
did, or probably than he would have carried them. But it is the 
natui-al defect of a weak divided Administration that they can neither 
resolve with moderation nor execute with firmness." (Wo odf all's Junius, 
iii. p. 86.) 

Burke took, as nearly as may be, the very same view as 
Junius. If there was a divergence, it was on the occasion of 
Eurke's maiden sj^eech on the 27th of January, 1766, 
when the Eepeal being in fact an open question, he voted 
for it; but many months before Junius appeared on the stage. 
Seven days later Eurke spoke against Pitt and voted for 
the Declaratory Act : though like Junius he subsequently, 
and indeed ever after, inveighed against the excess, to which 
the power thus properly declared of taxing the Colonies, was 
carried; and in 1774 when reviewing the whole of the pro- 
ceedings in his celebrated speech on American Taxation, he 
thus expresses himself in terms precisely according with the 
tone and language of Junius in the foregoing extract : — 

" When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, 1 affirm 
first, that the Americans did not in consequence of this measure call 
upon you to give up the former parhamentary revenue which subsisted 
in that country ; or even any one of the articles which compose it. I 
affirm also, that when, departiug from the maxims of that repeal, you 
revised the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the 
Colonists with new jealousy, and all sorts of apprehensions, then it was 



66 JUNIUS ON THE AMERICAN QUESTION. 

that they quarrelled with the old taxes, as vvcll as the new ; then it was 
and not till then, that they questioned all the parts of j^our legislative 
power ; and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid 
structure of this empire to its deepest foundations." 

The alleged discrepancy between the views of Junius and 
Burke on this subject has often been commented on. The 
discrepancy is in fact no discrepancy ; and there is instead 
a remarkable identity of views on the subject, between Burke 
and his coadjutor. 




XII. 

JUJSriUS'S PUBLIC LETTERS TO THE DUKE OF 
GEAFTOl^, DRAPER, THE DUKE OE BEDFORD, 

THE ki:n^g, etc. 



^'^I^UXIUS devotes his first Letter, January 21st, 1769, 
^^ in the common edition, (which he collected and pub- 
lished himself,) to the Duke of Grafton, whom he 
paints as ^^ an apostate by design — a young nobleman, 
already ruined by play.'' In April, Lord Temple tells 
^ Lady Temple that he hears from Calcraft that the 
Ministry '' are altogether by the ears," and in May, that 
*^ things teyid apace to a coalition among usP (Grenville 
Correspondence, iii. p. cxxviii.) This must have been known 
to the Burkes ; and accordingly the occasion is improved, 
and on May the 30th, Junius attacks the Duke again in his 
fiercest strain : — 

" There are some hereditary strokes of character, by Tivhich a family 
may be as clearly distinguished, as by the blackest features of the 
human face. Charles the First hved and died a hypocrite. Charles 
the Second was a hypocrite of another sort, and should have died upon 
the same scaffold. At the distance of a century, we see their different 
characters happily revived, and blended in your Grace. Sullen and 
severe without religion, profligate without gaiety, you live like Charles 
the Second, without being an amiable companion, and, for aught I 
know, may die as his father died, without the reputation of a martyr." 



68 JTJNITJS'S PUBLIC LETTERS TO THE 

Caustic as was this treatment of the man, be it remem- 
bered that the conduct of the Minister merited exposure, and 
the severest animadversion ; and that we cannot discard the 
moral calibre of statesmen from a just estimate of their acts. 
It is but the legitimate exercise of opinion, and of a critical 
judgment of public men. The incapacity of the Duke of 
Grafton and his numerous acts of corrupt government and 
tricky policy are amply attested ; and foul indeed must have 
been the conduct of the man, who appeared '^ unworthy, '^ 
in the moral vision of Horace Walpole ! 

I pass over the episode with the ill-fated Draper, a 
man of whom Walpole speaks contemptuously, as of 
** unsound intellects," and who deserved the demolition his 
chivalrous resentment invited. It is a mere parenthetical 
occurrence, and useful only as showing that Junius, like 
"William Burke, was imperfectly acquainted with the usages 
of the "War Office, in the matter of pensions. "^ 

The great aim of all the earlier of these collected Letters 
was to abet the exact course of assault on the entire person- 
nel of the Grafton Ministry, its policy and conduct, adopted 
by the Eockinghams and Grenvilles ; and by none more 
vehemently, vigorously, or incessantly, than Edmund Burke. 
It will be needless to wade through each Letter, and detail 
the constant coincidence between their views and the mis- 
siles which Junius hurled at the Cabinet. 

If Wilkes was tolerated, and taken by the hand, as he was 
at the same time by Junius and Burke, it was, professedly, 
because in his person the rights of election were trampled on 
by the recreant Government, and its servile Parliament. If 

* Of the attack of Junius on the Marquis of Granby, whom Draper 
afflicted with his championship, I will speak hereafter. 



DUKE OF GBAFTON AND GTHEES. 69 

<^hatham or Grenville were lauded by Junius, and compli- 
mented by Burke, it was invariably when, and in proportion 
to the degree in which, Chatham or Grenville were at that 
time assaulting the Ministry, and imperiling its existence. 

I will now point merely to a few of the most characteristic 
features in the well-known Letters of Junius, and which 
especially show their identity with the Burke principles 
and interests. 

In the whole of the affair of the Middlesex election and 
"Wilkes, the efforts of Burke and Junius ran pari passu to 
the same goal. "While Junius was assailing the Ministers 
with tooth and nail for the pardon of Mac Quirk, Burke 
■moved for an- inquiiy into the conduct of the Magistrates in 
suppressing the riots of St. George's in the Middlesex 
^election, and into the orders given by any of His Majesty's 
Secretaries of State ; which inquiry, he observed, would be 
probably attended by an impeachment of the Secretary of 
State who wrote the letter to the Chairman of the Magis- 
trates. This was Lord Weymouth. 

It has surprised many to account for what must have 
appeared a needlessly increased vehemence in Junius' s 
attacks on a Minister of such innate feebleness as the Duke 
of Grafton. Edmund Burke explains how William Burke 
derived a contrary impression, for on the 30th of July, 1769, 
Edmund Burke had received information which enabled him 
to assure Lord Eockingham of his '^ belief that the Duke of 
Grafton had got new and stronger assurances than ever of 
support^ and that the Court is fully determined to alide ly the 
plan of the last Session."" Thirteen days later, Edmund 
Burke writes that ^^we are come to a great crisis," that 
^' Will. Burhe is just come from Lord Verneifs,^^ — that he 



70 JUNIUS'S PUJiLTC LEXrKKS TO THE 

(William liurke) lias not been at the last General Court of 
the East India Company, that Lord Weymouth had done so 
and so, — that ''the gang"^' are driving at everything, either 
for their friends, or those whom they hope to make such," 
— that '' the Butes are certainly out of humour, but don't 
knowhow to help themselves," — that ''Will, is going to town 
in some hurry." 

Though Junius' s attacks were now aimed chiefly at the 
conduct of the Government and all concerned in the expul- 
sion of Wilkes, (Burke, at the same time being busily 
occupied in getting up the County petitions to the Crown on 
that grievance.) Junius now puts forth a diatribe, which, 
with the exception of his Letter to the King, has been more 
severely censured than any other. He attacks the Duke of 
Bedford. We have seen the growing hostility of Edmund 
Burke towards the Duke and his connection. He had good 
cause for it. It had been heightened to exasperation by the 
Address moved by the Duke himself at the opening of the 
Session. It sought to violate the right of trial by Jury among 
our American fellow- subjects, by the revival of what Lord 
Mahon righteously terms "the mouldering edict of a tyrant 
(Henry VIII.) from the dust where it had long lain, 
and where it ever deserved to lie." Such a proposal, he 
righteously adds, was "utterly unjustifiable." Burke as- 
sailed it and its proposer " totis virihusj^] and he hated 

* A favorite expression of Junius applied to the Bedfords. 
f Years after, Burke graphically describes the " unamiable disposi- 
tions " of the Bedfords at a political supper at Lord Rockingham's — 
"a behaviour in some of them scarcely polite, and a reserve which wine, 
circulated briskly until the sunbeams drove us from it, was not able to 
dispel ; though these people are not indeed candid, but naturally loose 



DUKE OF GRAFTON AND OTHEllS. 71 

the Duke of Bedford and 'Hhe Bloom sbuiy gang," as he calls 
them, too heartily, to allow them an escape from the fangs of 
Junius. Lord AVeymouth, the coryphceiis of the Bedfordites 
in the Cabinet, had throughout his brief Ministerial career, 
displayed in odious traits the inherent narrowness of mind, 
and the repulsive injustice of his character. The legends 
of faction have seldom exhibited more paltry, arbitrary, or 
tricky conduct than that of the Duke of Bedford and his 
minions. Horace Walpole speaks of him in terms of censure. 
ATassey, far more to be relied on, after speaking of the 
Duke's death, thus sums up his character, — '^if Granby was 
the most popular man in England, Bedford may be described 
as the public man of all others the most odious to the people." 
^ ^' *^ Enduring obloquy through life assailed the 
great Whig Peer." It did so justly. His acts of foreign 
policy vied in pusillanimous perfidy with the intrigues and 
tyrannies he perpetrated at home. As Secretary of State he 
had assented to the Treaty of Aix la Chapelle in the terms 
of the enemy, and brought the war to what Mr. Massey 
justly terms ^^ an ignominious conclusion." Our conquest of 
Cape Breton was shamefully ceded to Erance. 

"A tyrant to the weak and a coward to the strong," 
he insulted the sufferings of the starving weavers at home,^' 
upheld the lawless outrage on the rights of Election with the 
virus of an inveterate Tory, of a school now happily obsolete. 
He sought to rob our Colonists of Trial by Jury and by end- 
less intrigues and manoeuvres earned for himself, from the 

and careless talkers." He s^Deaks also of " Bedford House haying 
broken with your Grace (of Richmond) in a manner equally insolent 
and scandalous." (CoiTCspondence, i. 378, 380.) 

* See Massey' s History vol. i. p. 220. 



72 Junius' s public lettehs to the 

historian who attacks Junius for maligning him, (!) the 
reputation of ^'abusing the advantages of a commanding 
position to factious ends, and of preferring the petty interests 
of his particular party to any consideration of the public 
service!'* He is elsewhere described as *' intent only on 
securing the preponderance of his own weight in the Govern- 
ment : — what that Government should be was a secondar}^ 
object.'' (Massey's Memoirs.) 

Junius is scarcely more severe on his Grace even in the 
following most telling passages of his Letter. Here are the 
bitterest of them in his famous Letter to the Duke, of Sept. 
19th, 1769. The following refers to the auspicious period at 
which he was deputed to represent the Earl of Bute at the 
Court of Versailles : — 

*' It was an honorable office, and executed with the same spirit with 
which it was accepted. Your patrons wanted an ambassador who would 
submit to make concessions, without daring to insist upon any honor- 
able condition for his Sovereign. Their business required a man who 
had as little feeling for his own dignity as for the welfare of his country ; 
and they found him in the first rank of the nobility. BeUeisle, Goree, 
Guadaloupe, St. Lucia, Martinique, the Fishery, and theHavannah, are 
glorious monuments of your Grace's talents for negociation." 

" After two years submission, you thought you had collected strength 
sufficient to control his influence, and that it was your turn to be 
a tyi-ant, because you had been a slave. "When you found yourself mis- 
taken in your opinion of your gracious Master's firmness, disappoint- 
ment got the better of all your humble discretion, and carried you to an 
excess of outrage to his person, as distant from true spirit as from all 
decency and respect. After robbing him of the rights of a King, you 
would not permit him to preserve the honor of a gentleman.* It was 

* This refers to the fact that his Grace had charged his Sovereign to 
his face " with breaking his promises." This has been controverted, or 
at least an attempt has been made to modify the charge. Edmund 



DUKE OF GRAFTON AND OTHERS. 73 

then Lord AVeymouth was nominated to Ireland, and despatched (we 
well remember -^-ith what indecent liurr^^) to plunder the treasury of 
the first fruits of an em]3loyment which you well knew he was never 
to execute." 

I quote these pasages to show how thoroughly they chime 
with the opinions of Eurke, who just before its appearance had 
been putting on paper a *' formal attack" on all the 
objects that ^^ have been nearest and dearest to the Court and 
every one of its adherents.'' This paper, he tells Lord Eock- 
ingham, he has ^^read to William Burke." (Correspondence, 
vol. i. p. 199.) The outlines Junius etches of the type of 
statesman which a virtuous and patriotic Duke of Bedford 
might have been, and that which his Grace was, are among 
the most masterly portraits ever drawn. Other parts are too 
personal ; and some of the accusations unfair, because they 
are such as the accused cannot disprove. This is one of 
them : — 

"My Lord, we are too well aquainted mth your pecuniary character, 
to think it possible that so many pubhc sacrifices should have been made 
without some private compensations. Your conduct carries with it an- 
internal eridenee, beyond all the proofs of a court of justice." 

Junius has, however, been stiU more censured for the fol- 
lowing : — 

"I reverence the afflictions of a good man; his sorrows are sacred. 
But how can we take part in the distresses of a man whom we can 
neither love nor esteem ; or feel for a calamity of which he himself is 
insensible ? NYhere was the father's heart when he could look for, or 
find, an immediate consolation for the loss of an only son, in consultations 
and bargains for a place at Court, and even in the misery of balloting 
at the India House." 



Burke however not only beUeves it but spoke of it in the same spirit 
with Junius, and also of " the report of a gross and brutal treatment 
of the by a Minister at the same time odious to the people." 



74 JUXIUS'S PUliLTC LETTEKS TO TUE 

This incident of the balloting at tlie India House, again 
named in *'Philo," Janius's Letter of October 19th, 1769, is 
explained by Edmund Burke's assertion, on the 13th of the 
previous August, to LordEockingham, that ^'though William 
Burke had not been at the last General Court of the East 
India Company '' (as if it were his practice to be there) he, 
Edmund, had heard an extraordinary account of it, and they 
had '^adjourned till Tuesday." William Burke went to town 
then, and no doubt was present at the next meeting. 

I do not defend the taste of bringing forth the sad anec- 
dote, in a note to the Letter of the 19th of October, of the 
sale of his son's clothes, by the Duke of Bedford. It is, in my 
judgment, a blot on Junius to have done this, but in pallia- 
tion be it remarked that he did not name this until his gene- 
ral charges of avarice and unfeeling conduct had been 
controverted by a silly writer, signing himself ^^Modestus." 
I name this episode, because it affords another proof of my 
case : inasmuch as the widow of the Duke's deceased son, 
Lady Tavistock, was sister to the Hon. Augustus Keppel, 
whom Lord Eitzwilliam speaks of as having a '^ very intimate 
friendship " with the Burkes. (Correspondence, i. p. 138, 
note.) It is therefore probable that a fact not likely to have 
been named, except to ^^ a very intimate friend," was so 
brought to the knowledge of the Burkes, and was thus more 
likely to have been made known to William Burke, on its 
occurrence, than to any other person suspected or capable of 
being Junius. 

On the 7th of September, 1769, just after the auspicious 
reconciliation of the Grenville- Chatham brotherhood, Whate- 
ley, in his long account to George Grenville of his conference 
with Burke to cement an alliance with the Eockinghams, 
says, ^^ though we mentioned a particular bond of union, we 



DUKE OF (illAFrON AND OTHEUS. 76 

always kept to the Middlesex election as the text^ yet * * 
that the concert might be extended to all other subjects 
which might arise, etc." (Grenville, iv. p. 440.) 

JN^ext month Junius says on the Middlesex election : — 

" It is not wonderful that the great cause in which this country is 
engaged, should have roused and engrossed the whole attention of the 
people. I rather admire the generous spirit with which they feel and 
assert their interest in this important question, than blame them for 
their indifference about any other. "WTien the constitution is openly 
invaded, when the first original right of the people, from which all laws 
derive their authority, is directly attacked, inferior grievances naturally 
lose their force, and are suffered to pass by without punishment or 
observation." 

Again he says afterwards : — 
^'The Ministry have realized the compendious ideas of CaHgula. They 
know that the liberty, the laws, and the property of an Englishman 
have in truth but one neck, and that to violate the freedom of election, 
strikes deeply at them aU." 

N"ot long afterwards, (early in jSTovember) William Burhe 
is present with Edmund when he visits Lord Temple at 
Stowe — a visit of political amenities — a miniature concilia- 
lulum, preconcerted by Mr. Vhateley, who figures so largely 
in the ^^ Grenville Correspondence." By Edmund Burke's 
account of it to Lord Eockingham, it appears Lord Temple 
*^ was of opinion that, let what would happen, the great 
point for us was to get rid of the present Administration." 
He encouraged this course, moreover, by the assurance that 
Lord Chatham, his brother-in-law, ^^ was exceedingly ani- 
mated against the Ministry."^' Here then was the cue given 
directly from Lord Temple to William, who was present, 

* The Grenvilles cordially joined in getting up the petitions on the 
Wilkes affair, Temple actually visiting him in the King's Bench prison, 
after his surrender of himself, praising him for his conduct. 



76 JUNIUS'S PUBLIC LETTEKS TO THE 

as well as Edmund Burke. It was precisely the course which, 
from that moment, Junius followed with redoubled vigor. 

On the 14th of November, 1769, Eurke writes in great 
glee to Lord Eockingham of the present state of Lord Chat- 
ham's politics, and lays stress on his Lordship's intention 
to come out on the first day of the Session against the Min- 
istry, and especially on the necessity of forming an 
Administration in which the people might have some con- 
fidence, and in which the Rockinghams and Cavendishes 
should lead. In the same letter, adds Burke, '^ I said to Lord 
Temple, that no union could be formed of any effect or credit, 
which was not compacted upon this great principle that ^'the 
^ King's men ' should be utterly destroyed as a corps : to 
which, he, Lord Temple, assented very heartily." (Corres- 
pondence, i. p. 215-216.) 

Here were indeed both instructions and incentive for Wil- 
liam Burke. How well he followed them from the very day 
that letter was written, let his fierce onslaughts on the Govern- 
ment show : first, he attacks their apathy on the rescue of 
General Gansel ; secondly, on the shameless sale of a patent 
place to a Mr. Hine for £3,500, for the purpose of re- 
warding the outrages of Colonel Burgoyne in the Preston 
election. 

Was this a foul slander by the man in the mask ? Let 
Charles Lloyd tell us. He writes thus on Friday, December 
1st, 1769, to George Grenville: — *^ I am credibly informed 
that the story alluded to by Junius in his last Letter relating 
to Mr. Hine, is a fact." (Grenville Correspondence, vol. iv. 
p. 484.) Mr. Whateley also confirms it with further par- 
ticulars, (p. 495.) Junius, two days before Lloyd's letter, 
had announced his discovery to the Duke of Grafton, after 
a preface more suo, or rather, (after the playful fashion in 



DUKE OF GRAFTOX AND OTHERS. 77 

which a cat dallies with a newly caught mouse,) in the fol- 
lowing words : — 

" Your cheek tuni3 pale ; for a guilty conscience tells you, you are 
undone. Come forward, thou virtuous Minister, and tell the world by 
what interest Mr. Hine has been recommended to so extraordinary a 
mark of his Majesty's favor ; what was the price of the patent he has 
bought, and to what honorable pni-pose the purchase-money has been 
applied. Nothing less than many thousands could pay Colonel Bui'- 
goyne's expenses at Preston. Do you dare to prosecute such a creature 
as Yaughan, while you are basely setting up the Royal Patronage to 
auction .- Do you complain of an attack on your own honor, while 
you are selling the favors of the Crown, to raise a fund for corrupting 
the morals of the people ? And do you think it possible such enor- 
mities should escape without impeachment ? It is, indeed, highly your 
interest to maintain the present House of Commons. Having sold the 
nation to you in gross, they will undoubtedly protect you in the detail ^ 
for, while they patronize your crimes, they feel for their own." 

Whateley speaks of the " great noise '^ this affair (after- 
wards avowed and defended,) made at the time. It was all 
the worse for the affected purity which had just previously 
induced the Duke of Grafton to prosecute ]\Ir. Yaughan for 
suggesting the sale to himself of the reversion of a patent in 
Jamaica, which I believe he was otherwise entitled to. 

Ee it observed that the '^ impeachment '^ threatened in tlii& 
letter is an echo of Edmund Burke's threat of one against 
Lord Weymouth for his letter to the ]\Iagistrates. 

Eight well as Junius had labored in the fulfilment of his 
cousin's intimations of the 14th of iS'ovember, he had yet to 
complete it in the matter of the faction termed ^^the King's^ 
friends," whose demolition was to be the basis of a new group of 
purer Ministerial elements. Junius had never aimed his- 
blows obliquely : they were all ad jugidum. Before whom 
should he arraign the men who basely abused the privileges 
of royal fiicndship, but before the King on whose countenance 



78 Junius' s public letters to the 

they existed and on whose authority they infringed? It was on 
the 19th of December that the most audacious of all the 
Letters of Junius appeared: remarkable as a masterly, classical 
composition. He addressed it to ''a King/' It marshalled 
all the points on which the Cabinet and the system of 
secret advisers were vulnerable, together with the con- 
duct of the Sovereign himself, which had been previously 
insisted on by Burke. Comment would weaken the internal 
evidence which the following passages afford of the identity 
not only in matter, but often in expression. 

Junius exonerates the King from all '^ direct, deliberate 
purpose to invade those original rights of his subjects, on 
which all their civil and political liberties depend ; '' and 
assures him that he separates ^Hhe amiable, good-natured 
prince from the folly and treachery of his servants, and the 
private virtues of the man from the vices of his government." 
Wilkes is then introduced : and truly enough Junius says : — 

" The destruction of one man has been now for many years the sole 
object of your Grovernment; and if there can be anything still more 
disgraceful, we have seen for such an object the utmost influence of the 
executive power, and every Ministerial artifice, exerted without success* 
Nor can you ever succeed, unless he should be imprudent enough to 
forfeit the protection of those laws to which you owe your crown ; or 
unless your Ministers should persuade you to make it a question of force 
alone, and try the whole strength of Government in opposition to the 
people. The lessons he has received from experience, will probably 
guard him from such excess of folly ; and in your Majesty's virtues we 
find an unquestionable assurance that no illegal violence will be 
attempted." 

The discreditable dilemma to which the King was reduced 
is first charged on the Ministers : — 

*' From one false step you have been betrayed into another; and as 
the cause was unworthy of you, your Ministers were determined that 
the prudence of the execution should correspond with the wisdom and 



DUKE OF GRAFIOy A^^D OTHEK.S. 79 

dignity of the design. They have reduced you to tlie necessity of 
choosing out of a variety of difficulties ; to a situation so unhappy, that 
you can neither do wrong without ruin, or right without affliction. 
These worthy servants have undouhtedly given you many singular 
proofs of theii' abilities. Not contented with making Mr. Wilkes a man 
of importance, they have judiciously transferred the question from the 
rights and interests of one man, to the most important rights and in- 
terests of the people; and forced your subjects, from wishing well to 
the cause of an individual, to unite with him in theii' own. Let them 
proceed as they have begun, and your Majesty need not doubt that the 
catastrophe will do no dishonor to the conduct of the piece." 

The precipice to which the King was hastening, and the 
dearth of his resources, should a revolution ensue, are thus 
forcefully sketched : — 

'' But if the Enghsh people should no longer confine theii' resentment 
to a submissive representation of their wi^ongs, if, following the glorious 
example of their ancestors, they should no longer appeal to the creature 
of the constitution, but to that high Being who gave them the rights of 
humanity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surrender, let me ask you, 
Sii', upon what part of your subjects would you rely for assistance } 

In describing the slight hold the King has on each branch 
of his subjects, the just feelings of an Irishman are thus 
expressed : — 

" The people of Ireland have been uniformly plundered and oppressed. 
In return they give you every day fresh marks of their resentment. 
They despise the miserable Governor you have sent them, because he 
is the creature of Lord Bute : nor is it from any natural confusion in 
their ideas, that they are so ready to confound the original of a King 
with the disgraceful representation of him." 

The endeavour to force the Ministers to dissolve was one 
of the great objects of the petitions which Eurke and the 
Grenvilles got up with so much labor : — 

" How easy," says Junius, " how safe and honorable is the path before 
you. The English nation declare they are grossly injui'ed by their 
representatives, and solicit your Majesty to exert your lawfid prero- 



80 .lUNllfn's PUBLIC LETTERS TO THE 

gative, and give tliem an opportunity of recalling a trust, which they 
find has been scandalously abused. * * * They alone, 

aie injured ; and since there is no superior power to which the cause 
can be referred, they alone ought to determine." 

The course Edmund Eurke and his colleagues in opposition 
justly desired the King to take is here put in the plainest 
terms : — 

" You have still an honorable part to act. The affections of your 
subjects may still be recovered. But, before you subdue their hearts, 
you must gain a noble victory over your own. Discard those little, 
personal resentments which have too long directed your public conduct." 
* * * ''Without consulting your Minister, call together 

your whole Council. Let it appear to the public, that you can determine 
and act for yourself. Come forward to your people. Lay aside the 
wretched formahties of a King, and speak to your subjects with the spirit 
of a man, and in the language of a gentleman. Tell them you have 
been fatally deceived. The acknowledgment will be no disgrace, but 
rather an honor, to your understanding. Tell them you are determined 
to remove every cause of complaint against your government : that you 
wUl give your confidence to no man who does not possess the confidence 
of your subjects." ^ 

Again the King is warned to put no confidence in his 
^' friends." 

" Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affection 
by the vehemence of their expressions ! and when they only praise you 
indifferently, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to 
trifle with your fortune. They deceive you. Sir, who tell you that you 
have many friends whose affections are founded upon a principle of 
personal attachment. The first foundation of friendship is not the 
power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are re- 
ceived and may be returned." 

Now I affirm that the whole of this Letter is the result and 
embodiment of the gist of the following passage in Edmund 
Burke's letter to Lord Eockingham, written a few months pre- 
viously : in which, speaking of the Ministerial indiflference to 
the trials of the people, h e expresses this emphatic conviction: — 



hU^LE OF GKAFION ANJJ UTHEES. 



81 



'* What they suffer makes no impression : but I observe them to be 
much alarmed with whatever is brought directly into the King's pre- 
sence. Nothing can tend more to bring the whole system into disrepute 
and disgust with him, tban to see with his own eyes and hear with his 
own ears the effect it has upon the people. His feeling in this manner 
the ill consequences of the system will, I am persuaded, be the only 
means of bringing on that onfy change which can do good, — I mean the 
change of the whole scheme of weak, divided, and dependent adminis- 
trations." (Correspondence, i. 170.) 




XIII. 



THE LATEU LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 




^ERY striking coincidences between the Burkes and 
Junius, are apparent throughout all the remaining 
Letters. I shall cite only a few of them. I prefer 
not to exhaust the subject. It will be better that 
others should make their own discoveries, and arrive 
at their own convictions. I am content to point to the 
landmarks which indicate the course, and lead to the haven. 
In the whole of the long struggle between Wilkes and the 
King, the King and the City, and the City and Parliament, 
(for the Government was only the King's mouthpiece,) 
Burke and his cousin echoed Junius, or Junius echoed them. 
Through the whole process of those most discreditable con- 
flicts the alliance was so marked, both as to time, matter, 
and spirit, that the wonder is, Burke's denial of the author- 
ship obtained the misgiving credit it received. 

Take, for instance, his attack on the King's '' Horned 
Cattle ' ' Speech and the Address. He seems to have been at no 
pains to disguise the identity of his own sentiments, nor in 
any degree to have affected a milder tone than Junius in 
stating them. He moved an amendment, and bitterly ridi- 
culed both Speech and Address. 

Lord Dforth (who had succeeded the Duke of Grafton) had 
questioned the discontents of the people, and now stoutly de- 



THE LATEK LETTEUS OF JUNIUS. 83 

feuded himself; and in reply, Edmund Burke attacked Lord 
^"ortli. An '' overblown bladder has burst," he said, ^' and 
no one has been hurt by the crack." ^* His ideas were all 
incoherence and confusion." 

Again in the same strain, but in still worse taste, Burke 
depicts him thus: — 

" The Noble Lord who spoke last, after extending his right leg a fuU 
yard before his left, rolling his flaming eyes, and moving his ponderous 
frame, has at length opened his mouth." (Speech of January 9th, 
1770.) 

Lord JS'orth had now become of sufficient importance to 
attract the notice of Junius. In his Letter of February 14th, 
1770, he speaks thus of his appointment: — 

" His Majesty is indeed too gracious to insult his subjects, by 
choosing his first Minister from among the domestics of the Duke of 
Bedford. That would have been too gross an outrage to the three king- 
doms. Their purpose, however, is equally answered by pushing for- 
ward this unhappy figure'' 

Junius also says : — 

" The palm of Ministerial firmness is now transferred to Lord North. 
He tells us so himself, with the plenitude of the ore rotundo." 

The personalities in each attack are strikingly similar. 

There is nothing stronger in Junius than this language of 
Burke against the Ministry on the same charges : — 

" Military executions have been wantonly exercised, and wickedly 
countenanced ; murders have been abetted, and murderers protected, 
encouraged, and rewarded : public money has been shamefully squan- 
dered, and no account given of millions that have been misapplied to 
the purposes of venality and corruption : obsolete and vexatious claims 
of the Crown have been revived, with a view to influence the election 
of members to sit in the House. The majority of one branch of the 
legislature have arrogantly assumed the power of the whole, and 
daringly superseded the law of the land by their resolutions ; the humble 
petitions of the people to their Gracious Sovereign refused and discoun 
tenanced. The same baneful influence under which this country is 



84 THE LATEK LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 

governed, is extended to our fellow-sufferers in America ; tbe Constitu- 
tional rights of Englishmen are invaded, and money raised upon the 
subject without his consent : whole legislative assemblies have been 
threatened to be seized and brought to England, for crimes supposed to 
have been committed there : menaces have been used to intimidate the 
legislature of our provinces in compliance with Ministerial requisitions, 
which are altogether arbitrary and unjust : etc. And now let me ask 
the Ministerial hirelings if there are no grievances ?*" 

Yery mucli in the same style was Junius wont to array 
wrongs. Here is an example : — 

*' The same House of Commons, who robbed the constituent body of 
their right of free election, who presumed to make a law under pretence 
oi declaring it, who paid our good King's debts, without once inquiring 
how they were incurred ; who gave thanks for repeated murders com- 
mitted at home, and for national infamy incurred abroad; who 
screened Zor^ Mansfield; who imprisoned the magistrates of the metro- 
polis for asserting the subject's right to the protection of the laws ; who 
erased a judicial record, and ordered all proceedings in a criminal suit 
to be suspended." 

Again see the speech of Burke on the 2nd of April, 1770, 
in support of the City Eemonstrance, and his comments on 
the secret influence behind the throne, of which Dowdeswell 
and Grenville admitted they had felt the effects, with the 
remarks on the same point in Junius's Letter ^^ to a King," et 



See also the remarks in Edmund Burke's reply to Lord 
North in the debate of November 13th, 1770, to this effect, 
as given in the Parliamentary History: — ^'As Ministers 
have frequently made the King — so he frequently makes you 
(Parliament) the propitiatory sacrifice to atone for his trans- 
gressions:" a specimen of effrontery in attacking the Sove- 

* Both the Burkes voted in the minority for the amendment. (Ayes, 
138; Noes, 254.) 



THE LATEE LETTEllS OE JUNIUS. 85 

reign in direct terms, of which, I believe, no instances by 
persons of equal ability, can be found elsewhere than in 
Burke's Speeches and Junius' s Letters. 

Junius held the same language : — 

'* As the matter stands, the Minister, after placing his Sovereign in 
the most unfavorable hght to his subjects, and after attempting to fix 
the ridicule and odium of his own precipitate measures upon the royal 
character, leaves him a solitary figure upon the scene, to recal, if he can, 
or to compensate, by future compliances, for one unhappy demonstra- 
tion of ill-supported firnmess, and ineffectual resentment.". * * * 
" His Majesty wiil find at last, that this is the sense of his people, 
and that it is not his interest to support either Ministry or Parliament, 
at the hazard of a breach Tvith the collective body of his subjects." 

Though Villiam Burke spoke but little, when he did it 
was to give emphatic assent to Edmund's diatribes. Thus 
on the 8th of May, in the same Session, the latter having 
moved a string of resolutions on the Ministerial misgovern- 
ment of America; WilliamBurke is briefly reported as having 
** supported every article of the motion in strong terms." 
When the affair of the Lord Mayor and City Magistrates was 
in debate, he said, ^^that no part of the whole business, from 
the complaint to the judgment, had been conducted wisely or 
equitably, and I wish the House good night." He, and 
several other of the most violent members of the opposition, 
withdrew from the debate, unable to obtain a majority. 

By far the larger part of the onslaughts on the Ministry, 
maintained in these times by Burke, Barre, and other professed 
gladiators, turned on the City grievances, on the struggles 
arising out of the affair of the Printers, and the committal 
of the Mayor and Aldermen to the Tower. The passions of 
the democratical section of the citizens were fiercely aroused ; 
and the proverb was soon realized, that ^^ they who sow the 
wind, must reap the whirlwind." Lord Chatham, moreover, 



86 THE LATER LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 

always rampant in any course he took up in his advanced 
years, had railed at the moderation of Lord Eockingham,* 
and these popular fermentations did their work. Civic 
patriotism embodied itself in a new Society, called the 
'' Supporters of the Bill of Eights,'^ under the auspices 
of Wilkes, and embodied in its code every species of im- 
practicable democracy, greatly to the damage of reform 
and the Eockinghams. Edmund Burke was too wise in 
his generation to countenance the violent demands of these 
turbulent patriots. Before this, according to Walpole, ** the 
Marquis of Eockingham and the Cavendishes had kept aloof 
from the factious meetings of the opposition.'^ Burke, who 
had consulted Lord Eockingham on the proper course to sug- 
gest to the City patriots, and knew his feelings and 
moderation, expressed himself thus strongly, in a letter to 
Shackleton, in August, 1770, against them. He calls them 
*' a rotten subdivision of a faction among ourselves, who have 
done us infinite mischief by the violence, rashness, and often 
wickedness of their measures.'' (Correspondence, i. p. 229.) 
The dilemma had now arisen of either exasperating the 
properly Conservative feeling of the country by an alliance 
with the City demagogues, or of incurring the hostility of the 
very people whose importance they had swollen, and whose 
wrongs they had ridden as a stalking horse against Court 

* He wrote thus to Calcraft, " I was in town on Wednesday last : 
saw Lord Eockingham, and learned nothing more than what I knew 
before ; namely, that the Marquis is an honest and honorable man, but 
that moderation, moderation, is the burden of the song among the 
body : for myself, I am resolved to be in earnest for the pubUc, and 
shall be a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the 
moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen." (Chatham's Correspon- 
dence, vol. iii. p. 469.) 



THE LATER LETTERS OP JUNIUS. 87 

and Cabinet. "Wilkes," as Lord Mahon jmngently re- 
marks, " when he ceased to be a martyr, was shunned as 
an ally." It cost the Whig opposition, nevertheless, much 
of their power to cut him. Even proud Earl Temple had 
visited him in gaol. The Burkes had taken him up : especially 
William, whom he claimed as a friend ; for Garrick wishing 
to introduce a Mr. Aylward to '' the intrepid Wilkes," (using 
to Edmund Burke the very same epithet Junius applied, and 
which Garrick seems to know, therefore, would not be dis- 
tasteful, even to Edmund Burke,) sends to William Burke 
for an introduction. (Correspondence, i. p. 253.) Junius, 
though he never failed to express a just estimate of Wilkes's 
vices, had extolled his courage, vastly inflated his chronic 
vanity, and gratified his yearning for notoriety. He did 
more, as we shall presently see. 

It usually happens that w^hen men with good blood in 
their veins, and reputations to lose, stoop to fraternize with 
those who have neither, that be the motive as patriotic as it 
may, the mesalliajice leads to grief; and the union thus 
begun in moral compromise, ends in political disaster. 

The demands of the Society grew in extravagance and 
absurdity : the Hockinghams were disgusted : the friends of 
the Government rejoiced at the discord in the camp of their 
foes, and though the battle was still w^aged gallantly in Par- 
liament, the ardour of the combatants was chilled; the 
excitement of the country waned ; and the security of the 
Government increased in proportion as the noisy folly of the 
demagogues damaged the prestige of opposition. 

It became requisite in the infancy of this dilemma, to steer 
dexterously between the Charybdis of open discord with the 
City patriots, and the shipwreck of reputation which awaited 
fellowship with their excesses, or assent to their demands. 



88 THE L.VTER LETTERS OF JI'NIUS. 

Junius had, ere this, gone some lengths with Wilkes, and 
the more rational of the ^'Bill of Rights" people, ahead of the 
Eockingham party, in the same degree in which the political 
impulses and impetuosity of William had exceeded the 
steadier march of the elder Burke. 

On the 8th of September, 1770, Burke writes to Lord 
Eockingham, saying : — 

" They (the Court party) are well acquainted with the difference 
between the " BiU of Eights" (men) and your Lordship's friends, and 
they are very insolently rejoiced at it. They respect and fear that 
wretched knot beyond anything you can readily imagine, and far more 
than any part or all the other parts of the opposition, the reason is plain, 
etc. Will. Burke has seen Lord John Cavendish in town. His Lordship 
is of opinion that some further explanation of the common sentiments 
of the party would be advisable. Perhaps it may, etc. How well these 
villains deserve the gallows for their playing the Court game again at 
this season. The Lord Mayor wishes to see me, I take it for granted 
it is to know if you would wish anything done in the cit5^ I must beg 
some immediate advice from your Lordship. The great difficulty will 
be to prevent the traitors from bringing in speculative questions to sup- 
plant our business." 

See how well William Burke, as Junius, did this work 
next year. Observe also how William Burke is usually the 
informant of Edmund on all Ministerial proceedings. 

In August, 1771,— after the committal and release of 
Crosby and Oliver from the Tower, and when, before the 
reassembling of Parliament, it was of the utmost importance 
to drill the City martyrs, so as to array them advantageously 
against the Government — Junius writes to Wilkes privately y 
a series of Letters worthy of Machiavelli. In these he 
assures him that it must ever make part of Junius' s plan to 
support him while he makes common cause with the people : 
and that he ought to move to make Sawbridge Lord Mayor : 
reminds him of the disservice to him which arose from the 



THE LATER LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 89 

withdrawal of gentlemen from the '^ Bill of Rights," and warns 
him and Sawbridge of a connection every way hostile to 
them. 

]N^ow Sawbridge was a moderate man, and Junius was 
right in urging him on Wilkes for Lord Mayor instead of 
Crosby. He urged it as a matter of political prudence for the 
benefit of the cause, for the sake of Wilkes's '' public reputa- 
tion and personal interest," and he slily adds — ^'I do not 
deny that a stroke like this is above the level of vulgar policy, 
or that if you were a much less considerable man than you 
are, it would not suit you." He also suggests that to effect 
his purpose the Lord Mayor should begin by desiring a private 
interview between him, Sawbridge, and Wilkes. JS^ow this 
Mr. Sawbridge is mentioned in one of Edmund Burke's letters 
to the Marquis of Eockingham, before this, as a person with 
whom the Duke of Manchester had had a conversation, and 
as having guessed from him how Lord Chatham was disposed. 
(Correspondence, i. 241.) Junius having done his best to 
promote the election of a man confided in by Burke and the 
opposition, he in a subsequent Letter expresses, precisely as 
Burke had done, his disgust at the resolutions of the *' Bill of 
Eights" people; whose objects he denounces as absurd and 
impracticable, and uses Burke's own words to Lord Eocking- 
ham in denouncing a ^'Bill of Eights " resolution as a ''specu- 
lative question." (Junius, vol. i. p. 282.) He tells Wilkes that 
he ''at least should have shown more temper and prudence 
and a better knowledge of mankind." He also adds, that 
" no personal respects whatsoever should have persuaded him 
to concur in these ridiculous resolutions." In another Letter he 
threatens, "if no steps are taken with the ' Bill of Eights' to 
form a rational declaration, to institute an amicable suit against 
them before the tribunal of the public." In another Letter 



90 THE LATER LETTERS OE JUNIUS. 

he says — *^ Depend upon it the perpetual union of Wilkes 
and Mob does you no service.'' Junius also holds out as a 
reward of Wilkes's adoption of his views the charitable 
expectation of ^^ breaking Home's heart." In great measure, 
as regarded Wilkes, Junius was successful : he was alienated 
from the excesses of his party. There is, I observe, in one 
of these Letters a mention of Burke.* Junius says he is 
contented to refer Wilkes to Mr. Burke's opinion, on the 
proposal to allow the Americans to send representatives to 
Parliament. Junius ably backed his private remonstrances 
with Wilkes in his public Letters at the same time. That 
of the 5th of October, 1771, is so admirable an exposition of 
the spirit and genius of constitutional reform, as well as so 
perfect an echo of Burke's opinions, that I cannot refrain 
from giving an extract. It shall be the last : — 

" No man laments, more sincerely than I do, the unhappy differences 
which have arisen among the friends of the people, and divided them 
from each other. The cause undoubtedly suffers, as well by the 
diminution of that strength, which union carries with it, as by the 
separate loss of personal reputation, which every man sustains, when 
his character and conduct are frequently held forth in odious or con- 
temptible colors. — These differences are only advantageous to the 
common enemy of the country. The hearty friends of the cause are 
provoked and disgusted. * * * * I can more readily 
admire the hheral spirit and integrity, than the sound judgment of any 
man who prefers a republican form of government, in this or any other 
empire of equal extent, to a monarchy so qualified and limited as ours. 
I am convinced, that neither is it in theory the wisest system of govern- 
ment, nor practicable in this country. Yet, though I hope the English 
Constitution will for ever preserve its original monarchial form, I would 
have the manners of the people purely and strictly republican. I do 



* I erred therefore in saying in page 16, that there was but one men- 
tion of Burke by Junius. 



THE LATER LETTERS OF Jt'XlUS. 91 

not mean the licentious spirit of anarchy and riot. I menu a general 
attachment to the commonweal, distinct from any partial attachment to 
persons or families ; — an implicit submission to the laws only, and an 
affection to the magistrate, proportioned to the integrity and wisdom 
with which he distributes justice to his people, and administers their 
affairs. The present habit of our political body appears to me the very 
reverse of what it ought to be." 

The excellent discretion and temperate policy of these 
lessons, thus privately and publicly enforced by Junius, were 
unhappily disregarded by the City : and Junius soon had bit- 
ter experience of the hollowness of loud tongued patriotism. 
"Between ourselves," says he, in a private Letter toWoodfall, 
very shortly after his last Letter to "Wilkes, "let me recom- 
mend it to you to be much upon your guard with patriots." 

By February he informs his friend that the Lord Mayor 
(Mr. !N'ash) "is an abandoned prostituted idiot," that "the 
shameful mismanagement which brought him into office" had 
given Junius " the first and an unconquerable disgust :" and 
by the following January he discovered that there "were not 
ten men in the country who would unite and stand together 
upon any one question, and that it was all alike vile and 
contemptible." 

How many ardent political philanthropists since that day 
have had rueful experience of the same barren bourn, as the 
reward of all their generous efforts and aspirations ! Thus 
Junius ceased to write. Lord Eockingham and his friends, 
towards the close of 1771, "wearied out," as Walpole says, 
" by continual defeats "^^ * determined to sit still 
and give over parliamentary opposition." The material for 
it had, in effect, nearly passed away. The Queen Mother was 
dying : and with her the influence, real or imaginary, of 
Bute in the closet. Popular welfare had set in, and the English 
were at ease. Politics and prosperity are seldom in the ascend- 



^2 THE LATER LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 

ant together. Foreign nations had ceased to trouble us. America 
was quiet for the nonce, and even Spain had restored the 
Falkland Islands. At home, Sir James Lowther was non- 
suited and the Duke of Portland had got his own. The 
young Duke of Cumberland had indeed married the beautiful 
enchantress, Mrs. Horton, and — oh ! nuts for the Burkes !— 
there was no concealing that Colonel Luttrell, the Court 
nominee in the Middiesex election, was indeed her brother, 
and so the brother-in-law of the King's brother. "^ But this 
triumph had been drunk to the dregs. Even Wilkes's wrongs 
were unfortunately redressed, and that patriot quelled. Civic 
chivalry had betaken itself to its turtles and doffed its 
armour, while Burke bewailed to Quaker Shackleton that 
*' after the violent ferment in the nation, a remarkable dead- 
ness and vapidity had succeeded." 

Junius, having nought to write about, adopted the singu- 
larly judicious course, under those circumstances, of ceasing 
to write at all. It did not therefore require the dramatic 
discovery of the authorship in Sir Philip Francis, and his 
expedition to India, to account for this natural enough occur- 
rence of Othello's rest when Othello's occupation was gone. 
Junius therefore naturally answered the entreaty from Wood- 
fall to renew his labors, by the utterance of that uncivil 
truth, that '^ if in the present state of things he were to write 
again, he must be as silly as any of the horned cattle that 
run mad through the city, or as any of the wise Aldermen." 
(Woodfall's Junius, vol. i. p. 255.) 

Burke never seriously denounced Junius : in his cele- 
brated apostrophe on him in the House of Commons, he, in 

* Prerogative, and privilege, its eldest son, with all the vices of its 
rampant father, had gone to rest, and the wicked ceased to trouble. 



THE LATEPt LETTERS OY Jl/NIUS. 93 

reality, maguifies and proclaims the prowess of Junius, and 
the weakness of his prey, under the semblance, but it is only 
the semblance — of indignant censure : — 

^'How comes this Junius," he asks, ''to have broke 
through the cohwehs of the law, and to range uncontrolled, 
unpunished, through the land r " [His mention of the Letter 
to the King is faint blame, more than neutralized by partial 
approval.] ''When I saw his attack on the King; I own, 
my blood ran cold." [JS'ot, however, for the King's sake ; 
the sequel is significant.] — "I thought he (Junius) had ven- 
tured too far, and there was an end" — of what? of his 
infamous career ? JVo : " of his teiumphs !" — " not " (he 
continues,) " that he had not asserted many truths. Yes Sir, 
there are in that composition many bold truths by which a 
wise prince might profit. It was the rancour and venom, 
with which I was struck." These are the only words Burke 
ever uttered in condemnation of Junius, which do not admit 
of another construction : and he immediately atones for them 
by a peroration of praise. Having depicted the prostration 
of the House at the feet of Junius, and taunting the Speaker 
with his small reason to triumph at his share of the encoun- 
ter, he ends with this undisguised panegyric : — 

"King, Lords, and Commons are but the sport of his fury. Weie 
he a member of this House, "vrhat might not be expected from his know- 
ledge, his firmness, and integrity } He would be easily known by his 
contempt of all danger, by his penetration, by his vigor. Nothing 
would escape his vigilance and activity. Bad Ministers could conceal 
nothing from his sagacity, nor could promises, nor threats induce him 
to conceal anything from the public." 

Mr. Macknight fails signally in his attempt to rescue Burke 
from the stigma of this panegyric on Junius. He says : — 

" It now appears that Mr. Woodfall's repoii; of this speech is imper- 
fect, that the censure of Junius was alone correctly given, and that the 



94 THE LlTKlt LETTEHS OF JUXIL'S. 

praise iu the subsequent portion of the apeech was uot intended for this 
writer, but for the author of one of the two letters to Almon, (!) which 
hud been published in the summer, and ascribed to Camden and Dun- 
ning. The correction of this misrepresentation was accomplished by 
Mr. Wright, the editor of the printed Cavendish Reports ; and it is not 
the only dark insinuation against Burke's memory which the publica- 
tion of those debates has triumphantly dispelled." 

Or eclat Judceus Apella ! So Burke applied the whole of 
the commendatory part of this passage, referring as it did to 
his Letter 'Ho a King," not to Junius at all, but to one or two 
obscure letters of some anonymous scribbler ; which he inter- 
polated, it seems, for the purpose of praising them ! Yet 
Burke and his friends lived for years, never attempting to 
deny the accuracy of this report which created great interest 
at the time, and became an incident in Burke's history. 
!N"ow Woodfall's careful Editors quoted the whole of the 
speech, attributed at the time to Burke, forty- three years 
afterwards, without the expression of a doubt about its 
authenticity. 

It was, it seems, reserved for Mr. Wright, '^ triumphantly 
to dispel" \hQ '^ darh insinuation r^ There could scarcely 
be a stronger proof of the untrustworthiness of the '' Caven- 
dish Debates." 

It would not be possible, I think, for Burke, supposing 
"William Burke to be Junius, to have steered more dexte- 
rously between his evident interest at that time of diverting 
the hurtful suspicion of his authorship of the Letters from 
himself, without wounding the pride of his cousin,— seem- 
ing to condemn, whilst really enhancing the power and fame 
of Junius. 




XIY. 

ATTACKS OF JUXIUS OX LOED MANSFIELD. 

NUEPTtlSE has been expressed at the absence of suf- 
ficient motive for the severe attacks of Junius on Lord 
Mansfield. They seem to have originated thus : — 

On September 23rd, 1770, Edmund Barke writes as 
follows to the Marquis of Eockingham : — 

"His Lordship (Lord Chatham) is earnest that something 
should be undertaken, hut not until the proceedings in Yorkshire are 
known. It agrees with our idea of taking up the two points of the 
right of election, and the bringing evil counsellors to justice ; but woidd 
have something added concerning verdicts and juries. This is, I dare 
say, by far the most favorite point with Lord Chatham ; partly fi-om 
political views, and partly from his personal animosity to Lord 
Mansfield. But as the gratification of this animosity and the compass- 
ing of those political purposes, are much mere his affair than your Lord- 
ship' s, I did all in my power to possess our friend* with the absolute 
necessity of decliniag to engage in any matter of law, however specious, 
until we should have an opportunity of consulting those of the profes- 
sion who act with your Lordship." (i. CoiTespondence, p. 241.) 

Lord Ptockingham's assent having been apparently obtained, 
Junius writes his opening attack on the 14th of November, 
1770. In this and subsequent Letters he attacked Lord 
Mansfield on his conduct to the Printers, his endeavour to 
contract the province of the Jury, his introduction of the 

* The Duke of Manchester. 



96 ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LOKD MANSFIELD. 

arbitrary judicial discretion of Equity Courts into his own 
Common Law Court, and the bailing of Eyre, charged with 
felony and taken in flagrante delicto. These facts were open 
to animadversion, and Junius and Burke expressed opinions 
in general, and often in special, accordance on each of them. 

On the 9th of i!f ovember, 1771, there is singular evidence 
of an additional cause for the hostility of the Burkes against 
Lord Mansfield: and on that very day it happens that Junius 
dealt forth privately in his Letter to "Wilkes the following 
fierce threat against him : — '' With the help of God I will 
pull Lord Mansfield to the ground," Also on the same day 
he writes the brief note to the '^Advertiser," engaging to 
make good his charge against the Chief Justice, '* in order 
that the House may make it an article in the impeachment of 
the said Lord Chief Justice."^' Why this ebullition of 
ferocity took place on that day is fully explained if — hut only 
i/— the Burkes and Junius were suddenly under the influence 
of the same exasperation ; for on the self- same day, dating 
^^ Fludyer Street,''^ Edmund Burke writes thus to the Bishop 
of Chester, on the subject of the charges against him of being 
Junius : — 

" If your Lordship should choose to speak to Lord Mansfield, I wish 
you would inform him, that though I perfectly despise the attempt of 
the Court writers to &xMponm.e performances to which I am a stranger,^* 
[Mark the convenient vagueness of this :] " as a color for the infa- 
mous abuse they throw upon me so systematically ; yet I do find myself 
extremely hurt at perceiving that his Lordship has not thought proper 

* And he afterwards writes to Lord Camden, thus : — " I do not 
scruple to affirm, with the most solemn appeal to God for my sincerity, 
that in my judgment, he (Lord M.) is the mry worst and most dan- 
gerous man in the kingdom." He was nothing of the kind ; and no one 
of Junius' s acumen could call him so, unless half-mad with rage. 



ATTACKS OF JUNIUS ON LORD MANSFIELD. 97 

to discountenance the blending a vindication of his character with the 
most scurrilous attacks upon mine." 

The enmities which assailed the Eurkes at this time are 
more than once referred to by Edmund, as being bitter against 
William, and keenly felt by them both. There is little doubt 
that they conferred together on Lord Mansfield's conduct, 
and Dr. Markham's, and then wrote these three Letters 
under the same impulses at the same time. 

Edmund Burke also charges Lord Mansfield with '^ suffering 
his vindication to be converted into a vehicle of scandal upon a 
person who has hitherto been, at least, not his enemy. '''^'' 
(Correspondence, i. 270-1.) The Eishop not only refused to 
deliver this '^message,'' as he termed it, to Lord Mansfield, 
but, by the reply Eurke made in his long letter afterwards, 
he appears to have reproved him bitterly for sending it, as 
'^ ill- conceived and improper.'* (Idem, p. 284.) 

N'othing could have exasperated the Eurkes more intensely. 
Now this fully accounts for the peculiar rancour of Junius' s 
attacks on Lord Mansfield : far exceeding the provocation of 
his questionable ruling on the trial of "Woodfall, or his 
unquestionable error in bailing Eyre ; or of his not very 
formidable support to Ministerial interests. Can the advo- 

* The " Cavendish Debates " are said to contain some denunciations 
by Burke of Junius' s earlier attacks on Lord Mansfield, but which are 
wholly omitted in Woodfall' s reports of Burke's speeches at the time : 
and which, there is every reason to believe, were either sent by "William 
Burke, or some intimate ally of Edmund Burke, from the flattering 
terms in which he is always introduced. It is natural enough that 
William Burke, as Junius, should conceive his animosity to Mansfield 
before Edmund Burke : since Lord Mansfield's first offence was in the 
trial of Woodfall for Junius' s Hbel on the King. It was to Burke's 
interest to preserve outward respect towards Lord Mansfield, were it 
only out of deference to his then intimate friend, Dr. Markham. 

H 



98 ATTACKS OF JUNIUS OK LORD MANSFIELD. 

cates of the claims of Sir Philip Francis, Lord George 
Sackville, Lord Temple, or Lord Lyttelton, adduce equal or 
sufficient cause for the ferocity of Junius against Lord Mans- 
field r I think not. 



I have now done with proofs drawn from the similarity 
and identity of the interests and animosities of the Burkes with 
the writings of Junius. I can honestly affirm that, lengthily 
and tediously as I fear I have detailed them, I have omitted 
far more than I have cited. I can also truly state that, up 
to the moment of writing this passage, I have found no 
single instance in which the course taken by Junius has been 
other than that which I should, to the best of my judgment, 
have expected William Burke to have taken at that time, 
and under his peculiar circumstances. Leaving the reader 
to draw his own conclusions from his own researches as well 
as mine, I am now about to name other facts which, I think, 
give great collateral support to my conviction respecting the 
authorship. 




xy. 



THE STOCK JOBBING OF WILLIAM BURKE. 




N^EEQUEJ^TLY has it occurred to me, and I dare say to 
others, that no individual could have had a motive 
strong enough to undergo the intense labor of all 
Junius' s Letters, and the pains he took to drill "Wilkes 
in private, and drub every Ministerial underling, and 
ferret out their vulnerable points, and those even of 
their relatives, in order to bring a party favorable to the 
views of Junius into power, — without some much more 
pressing reason than attached to any one of the persons yet 
named as the author. 

Added to the very strong political feelings, and, as I think, 
really genuine patriotism of William Burke, there existed 
in his case the severe pressure of the res angustcB domi. 
Both he and Eichard were, before Junius ceased to write, 
in money difficulties, which rendered the recovery of an offi- 
cial income — destitute as William was of a profession to fall 
back on — a pressing necessity. This was the case with no 
one of the other candidates for the authorship. 

During the summer of 1767, sixty members of Parliament 
were concerned in the funds of the East India Company, and 
among them was William Burke, who, in the discussions on 
the Bill introduced in the House to restrain the Company from 
making dividends, avowed himself a proprietor of East Indian 



100 TUE STOCK JOBBING OF WILLIAM BTJRKE. 

Stock," and according to Mr. Macknight, ^ ^justified the vote 
he had given in that capacity." On the 19th of August, 1 768, 
Junius writes in his Miscellaneous Letters : — 

" The greatest part of my property having been invested in the 
Funds, I could not help paying some attention to rumours or events, by 
which my fortune might be affected." Further on, he says, " I owe 
my thanks to that writer that I am safely landed from a troubled ocean 
of fear and anxiety." (Woodfall's Junius, vol. iii. p. 92.) 

Mr. Macknight enables us to link this investment in land, 
of money made in Stock Jobbing, with William Burke's 
transactions at the same time. 

*' Lord Vemey and Edmund's two relatives, Eichard and "William 
Burke, continued busily speculatiag in Indian Stock. Eichard and 
Wnham appear to have had a run of good fortune, and at this time 
could command a considerable simi of ready money." 

" Their assistance was probably of much importance to Burke, who, 
before the new Parhament met, had become a landed proprietor, and had 
even taken possession of his territorial acquisition." (Vol. i. pp. 291-2.) 

Edmund Burke confirms this, and writes in May of the 
same year to Eichard Shackleton thus : — 

"I have made a push with all I could collect of my own, and the 
aid of my friends, to cast a httle root in this country. I have pur- 
chased a house, with an estate of about 600 acres of land in Bucks. 
(Correspondence, vol. i. p. 153.) 

On the 6th of October following, Junius again reverts to the 
Funds, and to his own prophecy of ^^ the great fall of the 
Stocks," which has since happened. This shows that his 
attention was much turned to the subject. 

In 1769, Indian Stock fell sixty per cent., and Mr. Mac- 
knight says : — 

" In such a storm the fortunes of Eichard and William Burke were, 
doubtless, with those of their associates in the same traffic, tossed help- 
lessly on the waves. Instead of continuing to Edmund the assistance 
they had before afforded him in making his landed purchase, their 



THE STOCK JOBBING OF WILLIAM BUllKE. 101 

necessities probably required from him the immediate return of all they 
had before advanced. Burke was certainly at this time compelled to 
borrow more money. A letter, dated this month of June, 1769, is 
extant, in which he asks his old friend Garrick for the loan of a 
thousand pounds." (Macknight, vol. i. p. 384.) 

Instances abound of the intimate acquaintance of Junius 
with the affairs of the '^ Alley :'' and there can be but little 
doubt that the attacks on Lord Earrington, with which 
Junius terminated his literary crusade, were mainly provoked 
by his ^* placing a little gambling broker at the head of the 
War Office,'' who had offended or possibly cheated William 
Burke, and was brother-in-law to Bradshaw, whom he cor* 
dially hated. His Miscellaneous Letter (CV.) of January, 
1772, in which he describes a dialogue between this Chamier 
or '' Mr. Shammy," as he calls him, evinces a complete 
knowledge of the slang of the '^Alley/' 



ii 



XYI. 

A PLEA FOE THE PEKSOIS^ALITIES 
OF JUNIUS. 




^EOPLE who are prone to condemn Junius for his 
personalities should make due allowance for the char- 
acteristics of the political arena of his day. So com- 
pletely had the personal attachments and antipathies 
of the Monarch permeated the whole of society that, as 
a necessary result, they debased the gladiatorship 
alike of Press and Parliament : and '^ attacks on private 
character/' says Foster in his life of Goldsmith, ^* were the 
most liberal source of newspaper income." Writers for the 
Press were specially appointed for that department. Many 
periodicals subsisted solely by catering for a depraved taste, 
thus engendered. Pungent scurrilities and scathing sarcasms 
alone commanded attention. Mr. Massey, in his ^^ History," 
depicts nightly scenes even in Parliament, in those days, 
which would disgrace the mob oratory of Moorfields. 

To such license of language the bitterest satire of Junius 
has no approach in coarseness. It may perhaps be contended 
that if a writer so elegant and polished as Burke, or any one 
sharing his inspiration, wrote or revised Junius, it is in- 
credible that personalities, however polished, yet so grossly 
offensive, could have disfigured his productions. Unhappily 
it is not so : the tone adopted in debate, even by the great 



A PLEA FOR THE PERSONALITIES OF JUNIUS. 103 

Burke himself, is a very coarse counterpart of the more 
matured and chastened diatiibes of his literary ally. So 
much so, that this forms another link in the chain of evidence 
which identifies the Eurkes with Junius. Massey, writing 
of the debates in 1771, in the very midst of the labors of 
Junius, says, ^' Burke then turned round upon Conway, who 
had spoken against the Printers, though with his usual 
moderation, and urged by former animosity, assailed him 
with the fiercest invective." At a somewhat later period, 
we have ample evidence that the Burkes were quite capable 
of unjustifiable attacks on personal character as bad as the 
worst excesses of Junius. It is painful to reproduce the 
blots on the reputation of men otherwise entitled to im- 
perishable renown : but as the assumption that Burke could 
not have been gailty of the scurrilities of Junius has been 
deemed a valid reason for his innocence of all connection 
with the Letters, it is essential to demolish it. Massey says, 
in describing the debates of 1774 :^ — 

" But amidst numerous slanderers, whom to name would only be to 
redeem from the obscurity into which they have simk, it is painful to 
record that Burke was among the foremost in this ignoble strife. The 
years, the philosophy, the decorum which governed his private Hfe, 
could not restrain this great man from plunging into the excess of party 
violence, and from using weapons which the most impetuous and 
profligate of his coadjutors forbore to touch. It was not enough for 
Burke to assail in unmeasured terms the pubhc character and pohcy of 
the Minister, but he must hold up the bodily defects and infirmities of 
the man — not, indeed, to the ridicule, for with ah. its faults the pre- 
vailing temper of the Assembly has ever been that of gentlemen — but 
to the disgust of the House of Commons." 

"William Burke was precisely of that peppery temperament 
which the Editor of Woodfall's Junius so truly said must be 

* History of England, &c. vol. ii. p. 219. 



104 A PLEA FOR THE TERSONALITIES OF JUNIUS. 

a marked characteristic of a successful claimant to the author- 
ship of Junius. He is reported more than once in Parlia- 
mentary history, as dealing in invectives. A witness at the 
Bar of the House excited his wrath by saying that, when in 
office, '^ he (William Burke) knew very well what sort of 
things were the opinions of Crown lawyers.'' TJpon this he 
broke out and exclaimed, '^ We (the House) are in an abject 
state." On another occasion, he is reported to have " spoken 
with vehemence" about the mistaken notions of the House 
respecting their privileges. He said ^Hhey had issued their 
orders and had taken up a chimney sweeper and a milkman 
whom they forced to attend at the Bar." '^Did it enhance 
their dignity," he asked, 'Ho have the veriest of the rabble, 
the lowest wretches in God's creation to kneel before them ? 
It was to the last degree absurd. They would soon lose their 
privileges." Colonel Onslow"^' replied tartly ^' that his milk- 
man was of quite as much consequence as some modem 
patriots," etc., etc. 

Questions have often arisen whether Edmund Burke could, 
consistently with his undoubted political integrity of charac- 
ter, (and as a private friend, honored to the last by the 
affection and esteem of so thoroughly good a man as Samuel 
Johnson,) have sanctioned or aided the attacks of Junius. 

Let it be remembered, first, that the conduct of the Govern- 
ment in the matter of Wilkes and the Middlesex election 
was one of the grossest excesses of lawless power perpetrated 
since the days of Charles Stuart. To corrupt and enslave 
a Parliament to such an extent as to make it declare a man 

* I need scarcely say that Junius detested Onslow, nor that the 
Member of Parliament and ex-Minister who could thus give the basti- 
nado with his tongue, was perfectly capable of the invectives of Junius^ 
and of more than all his irritabilitv. 



A PLEA FOK THE PERSONALITIES OF JUNIUS. 105 

duly elected, by its own arbitrary act, who had polled 296 
votes, instead of the man who had polled 1193, was suffi- 
cient to destroy every vestige of constitutional liberty, if 
tolerated. This alone goes far to justify Burke and Junius. 

It was no small matter which could have induced Sir 
George Saville or Edmund Burke to declare to the House, as 
they did, that it had betrayed the country, and to defy it 
to vindicate its honor by sending them to the Tower; 
neither would Lord Chatham, when afterwards reviewing 
the dogged conduct of the ^'King's friends,'' in a letter to 
Earl Temple, have used language such as this upon slight 
provocation. 

" Incomparable is the wrongheadedness and folly of the Court — 
ignorant how to be four-and-twenty hours in good ground : for they 
have most ingeniously contrived to be guilty of the rankest tyranny 
in every step taken to assert the right, A happy state of the country, 
but a true one." 

Nor was Lord Temple, with his patrician s^Tupathies, a 
likely person to have echoed mere popular clamour or en- 
dorsed the calumnies of demagogues. Nevertheless he visited 
Wilkes in the King's Bench Prison, and while Junius was 
still attacking the Ministry, wrote to his brother - in - law 
of the ^^ incredible imbecility and rashness of the idiot 
Ministry," and of the ^' embarrassment and disgrace of the 
Court." (Grenville Correspondence, iv. 534.) * 'All ranks of 
men," writes the Earl of Buckinghamshire to GeorgeGrenville, 
in September, 1769, '^ except those immediately connected 
with the Ministers, express their abhorrence of them and 
their conduct." (Idem, 457.) *'Lord Granby," writes Mr. 
Whateley in December following, '^ holds a language not at 
all equivocal : he is eager in opposition and I believe will 
be firm." It is a pity that he proved otherwise. 



106 A TLEA FOi: THE TERSOXALITIES OF JFNIIJS. 

Is Junius condemnable for slaying the ^^ small deer," and 
*^ insignificant creatures, not worth his generous rage?" 
Judge them by their masters. Let Lord Macaulay tell 
how far the members of the Bloomsbury gang were wrong- 
ed or calumniated by the censor of themselves and their 
satellites : — 

"The Bedfords, or as they were called by their enemies, Hhe 
Bloomsbury gang,' professed to be led by John, Duke of Bedford, but, 
in truth, led him wherever they chose. Some of them were indeed, 
to do them justice, men of parts. But here we are afraid eulogy must 
end. Sandwich and Kigby were able debaters, pleasant boon com- 
panions, dexterous intriguers, masters of all the arts of jobbing and 
electioneering, and both in pubHc and in private, shamelessly immoral." 
Of Lord Weymouth, he says, " he was indolent and dissolute." (Edin- 
burgh Review, January, 1834.) 

"The part ofWedderburn, (writes Lord Chatham to Cal- 
craft,) is deplorable ; of Lord Suffolk, pitiable." 

jSTow these, and such as these, were the objects of Junius's 
worst personalities. When he attacked men like the Marquis 
of Granby, who were aiding the Ministry more by the coun- 
tenance of their respectability, than the services of their 
profligacy, he did so in far more measured terms. Of Lord 
Granby' s early career and character, he speaks with due 
praise, while he criticises the degree of his services, and 
condemns him, perhaps somewhat too strongly, for nepotism 
in bestowing patronage, his ignominious juxtaposition with 
the most venal hirelings of the Government crew, and his 
vote in favour of Luttrell against the rights of election. All 
these were public grounds of disparagement, and, I think, 
valid ones. 

Like nearly every public idol, Lord Granby had been 
overrated, and his latter course of discreditable allegiance to 
a bad Government, too much overlooked. 



A PLEA FOll THE PERSONALITIES OF JUNIUS. 107 

I greatly lament the needless severities of Junius : some 
of his personalities are clearly indefensible. Let us, however, 
who live in times when the baser atrocities of stealthy 
slander are rife, deal measured condemnation on a man, who 
not only confined his attacks to the worst official culprits, 
but, who proclaimed his charges, and published his ana- 
themas. The accused had, at least, the power of vindicating 
themselves with similar publicity, and with like effect. To 
defame at all, is bad enough. Byron, desirous of satirizing 
with his keenest power ^^the host delighting to deprave," 
tells them to ^' revive forgotten lies, and add their own," but 
conceives nothing viler in the craft of slander than this : — 
'' Let no defect — let nq misfortuue 'scape, 
And prints if luckily deformed, his shape." 

Our slanderers are wiser in their generation, and have 
greatly improved on Byron's model : they don't print, but 
whisper their lies. Having assumed a tender solicitude for 
your welfare, and put on white neckcloths and long faces, 
they give their tale strength and credit, preserving its false- 
hood from exposure, by entreating 'Hhat it may not be named 
again." This clever system, and the number of amiable 
people who religiously believe in the compassionate regard 
of your candid friend for you, and in the gospel truth of all 
he tells them, give a power to modern defamation unap- 
proached by the public malignities of the Junius era. 





XYII. 

THE GREAT PRINCIPLES ADVOCATED 
BY JUNIUS. 

LY no one f aU into a mistake which I grieve to see 
countenanced by Mr. Massey. After calling the 
Letters of Junius '^compositions of extraordinary 
merit/' he strangely affirms, in the next page, that 
their only excellence is to be found in the least 
worthy part of political warfare, namely, personal 
satire; (Vol. i. p. 364-5.) and also thaf when treating public 
questions, apart from personality, Junius' s views are narrow, 
and his expressions trite." I entirely agree with Junius, and 
think him fully warranted in his assertion that ^'when Kings 
and Ministers are forgotten, when the force and direction of 
personal satire is no longer understood, and when measures 
are only felt in their remotest consequences, this book will, I 
believe, be found to contain principles, worthy to be trans- 
mitted to posterity," 

Junius had a busier mission than that of writing panegyrics 
on principles, — or didactic essays on axiomatic politics. He 
had not fallen on times in which it was necessary to teach 
the general public the elements of the Constitution. Ead 
as were the political perfidies of men in office, and the 
intrigues of party, the Whig assertors of purity were not 
then usually addicted to the worst practices of corruption ; nor 



TUE GRKAT PRINCIPLKS ADVOCATED H'i JUNIUS. 109 

were their leaders chosen from among the least consistent of 
statesmen. Principles had not then degenerated into the 
mere shibboleth of party ; the great landmarks were clearly 
defined ; a definite and liberal policy, and a manly and un- 
swerving integrity were embodied in the Eockingham and 
Grenville parties : and although Junius may be truly said 
to have furthered to the uttermost his own interests, in 
battling for theirs, he was not the less taking the only 
course which consisted with effective patriotism. 

Principle, in those days, if not practised, being at least 
understood, Junius was, in my judgment, right in applying 
his vast powers rather to the chastisement of wrong-doers, 
than to theoretical disquisitions on wrongs done. I agree 
with him moreover, that '^ though the indulgence of private 
malice and personal slander should be checked and resisted 
by every legal means, so a constant examination into the 
characters and conduct of Ministers and magistrates, should 
be equally promoted and encouraged." *^ They,'' he justly 
adds, '^ who conceive that our newspapers are no check on 
bad men, or the execution of bad measures, know nothing of 
this country." 

Junius, however, was nowise remiss in the declaration, 
or in the maintenance, of what our historians and statesmen 
have usually deemed great principles,— whether in politics or 
social ethics. Aphorisms, such as these, will probably live 
with the best passages of our best writers : — 

— '^ The submission of a free people to the executive 
authority of government is no more than a compliance with 
laws, which they themselves have enacted." 

— '^ Loyalty in the heart and understanding of an English- 
man is a rational attachment to the guardian of the laws." 



110 THE GREAT PRINCIPLES ADVOCATED RY JUNIUS. 

— '^ Let it be impressed into your minds, let it be instilled 
into your children, that the liberty of the Press is the palla- 
dium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an 
Englishman.'' 

— ^^Let me exhort aad conjure you never to suffer an 
invasion of your Constitution, however minute the instance 
may appear, to pass by without a determined persevering 
resistance. One precedent creates another, they soon accu- 
mulate, and constitute law : what yesterday was fact, to-day 
is doctrine." 

— *' Aristocracy is as fatal as democracy. Our Constitu- 
tion admits of neither." 

— '' There is no surer sign of a weak head, than a settled 
depravity of heart. A base action is a disorder of the mind, 
and next to the folly of doing it, is the folly which defends it." 

— '^ A clear unblemished character comprehends not only 
the integrity that will not offer, but the spirit that will not 
submit to an injury; and whether it belongs to an indi- 
vidual or to a community, it is the foundation of peace, of 
independence, and of safety. Private credit is wealth — 
public honor is security." 

— '^ The cold formality of a well repeated lesson is widely 
distant from the animated expression of the heart." 

— ^' Injuries may be atoned for and forgiven ; but insults 
admit of no compensation. They degrade the mind in its own 
esteem, and force it to recover its level by revenge." 

— ^'Liberal minds are open to conviction — ^liberal doc- 
trines are capable of improvement. — There are proselytes 
from atheism, but none from superstition." 

— ''The injustice done to an individual is sometimes of 
service to the public. Facts are apt to alarm us more than 
the most dangerous principles." 



TUE GHKAl I'RTNCIPLKS AUYUCATED BV JUNIUS. Ill 

— -^* The fundamental principles of Christianity may still 
he preserved, though every zealous sectary adheres to his 
own exclusive doctrine, and pious ecclesiastics make it part 
of their religion to persecute one another." 

— '^ In the shipwreck of the state, trifles float and are pre- 
served; while everything solid and valuable sinks to the 
bottom, and is lost for ever." 

— '' Let us take mankind as they are. Let us distribute 
the virtues and abilities of individuals, according to the 
offices they afi'ect : and when they quit the service, let us 
endeavour to supply their places with better men than we 
have lost. In this country there are always candidates 
enough for popular favor. The temple of fame is the shortest 
passage to riches and preferment." 



Junius has been often charged with profanity. I greatly 
lament to find Lord Mahon giving countenance to this really 
groundless, but terrible charge. He did indiscreetly say 
that the Bible and Junius would outlive the Commentaries 
of the Jesuits. The juxtaposition of the Holy Scriptures 
and human writings is irreverent and wrong : but a single 
instance of this kind is not ground enough to accuse a man 
thereupon of profanity. Philo Junius says of this : — ^^ These 
candid critics never remember any thing he says in honor 
of our holy religion ; though it is true that one of his lead- 
ing arguments is made to rest upon the internal evidence 
which the purest of all religions carries with it, I quote his 
words, and conclude from them, that he is a true and hearty 
Christian in substance, not in ceremony ; though possibly he 
may not agree with my reverend lords the bishops, or with 
the head of the church, thai prayers are morality , or that 
is reliqionP 



112 THE GREAT PRINCIPLES ADVOCATED BY JXTNIUS. 

The political principles involved in the war waged by 
Junius, are these : — 

The rights of election over the arbitrary power of Parlia- 
ment to annul them : In r^ Wilkes and the Middlesex 

Election. 

The freedom of Government from the secret influence of 

Court favorites : versus Lord Eute. 

The liberty of the Press, and trial by Jury : versus 

Lord Mansfield. 

The liberty of the Person : as against General "War- 
rants. 

The rights of property against the usurpations of the 

Crown : Nullum Tempus, and the grant of the Duke of 

Portland's property to Sir James Lowther. 

Due regard to military merit : versus the Ministerial 

treatment of Sir J. Amherst. 

etc., etc., etc. 
There was one, and one only blot in the political code of 
Junius, and which alone defaces his advocacy of Constitu- 
tional rights. He spoke tenderly of nomination boroughs. 
He was startled at the idea of an extensive amputation of 
them. We must pardon this foible in William Burke, he 
not only owed his seat in Parliament to one, hut so did 
Edmund; and when William tried to gain an open seat, 
he failed. In any other of the numerous patriots who have 
been put forward as Junius, such doctrine would have been, 
of course, unaccountable ; in William Burke, it was natural. 



XVIII. 
DIVERS SMALL PROOFS. 



<^^u^ILLIAM BURKE was in or near London during the 
ill whole time that Junius figured in print. On three 
i^ occasions we are enabled to identify their movements . 
On the 13th of August, 1769, Edmund Burke, 
in a letter to Lord Rockingham, says: — *^ Will, is 
just come from Lord Vemey's. He has not been at 
the last Court of the East India Company :" and at the end of 
the same letter, he says: — '^Will. is going to Town in some 
hurry ;'' so that I have only time to assure your Lordship 
that I am ever," etc. 

There had been no '^ Junius " for sixteen days, but, dated 
the very day after Edmund's letter, namely, the 14th of 
August, 1769, appears one to the ^^ Public Advertiser."^ 
But more noteworthy still, under date of Wednesday evening, 
August 16th, Junius's private Letter to"Woodfall, (Xo.VII.) 
begins with these words : — ^^ I have leen some days in the 
country, and could not conveniently send for your letter, 
until this night." 



* It must be remembered that no letters of importance at this period 
were ever sent by post. ALL were dehyered by other means, owing to 
the impertinent pryiag of the post offices. This frequently appears in 
the correspondence of the day. Junius seems to have sent his by London 
messengers met in the streets. 

X 



114 DIVERS SMALL PKOOFS. 

On the 6tli of November, 1769, Edmund Eurke writes to 
Lord Rockingham, from Beaconsfield, (Correspondence, vol. i. 
p. 207.) '^ Will. Burke and I spent the best part of last week 
with Lord Yerney,^' and again, '* Will, tales this to Town, 
whither he goes to correct the sheets of DowdeswelFs 
pamphlet.'' On ]N'ovember the 8th (two days after), Junius 
writes privately to Woodfall, (Ifo. XI.) ^' I have leen out of 
town these three weehs, and though I got your last, could not 
conveniently answer it.'' 

On the 9th of July, 1769, Edmund Burke informs Lord 
Eockingham, that just as he was on the point of writing to 
him, he ^' heard from "Will. Burke that he had seen Lord 
Chatham pass by on his return from St. James's," etc. 
(Correspondence, i. 173.) On the 8th, Junius dates one of 
his fiercest philippics against the Duke of Grafton, proving 
that he must have been in London at the time, for his letters 
were never posted from the country. This Letter has inter- 
nal evidence of a knowledge of the fact that Burke relates. 

Of course these and other coincidences, already named, 
may be accidental : but can similar ones, or as many, be 
produced in favor of any other claimant ? I doubt it : at 
any rate it has not been done. 



Lord Mahon justly says that '* no theories as to the 
authorship of Junius can be complete or satisfactory which 
do not supply some adequate explanation of the remarkable 
anomaly " of Lord Holland's having been ^' designedly 
spared " by him. It is easily supplied as regards the Burkes : 
for they were on intimate terms with the Eox family who 
hated the Bedfords in common with Burke, and at the very 
time Junius was attacking the latter, his friend Charles Eox 
was supplying Edmund Burke with private information about 



DIVERS SMALL PKOOFS. llo 

tlie Court party. '' Charles Fox," Burke writes to Lord Rock- 
iugham on the 30th of July, 1769, ^^ called to see rae, and I 
gathered a good deal of the tone they (the courtiers) hold from 
him. He talks of the Bedfords in his old strain of dislike, etc." 
(Correspondence, vol. i. p. 180.) Again in September, 1770, 
Burke writes to Lord Eockingham thus : — ''Will. Burke has 
seen Fitzherbert who tells him that Parliament will not meet 
in November. Charles Fox thinks it will." He was then a 
Lord of the Admiralty. 

The Burkes had, however, a far higher motive for sparing 
Fox. He had spent a portion of the previous summer^^ with 
them at Beaconsfield, and Mr. Macknight tells us that ''he 
felt himself irresistibly attracted " to Edmund Burke, whose 
"commiseration was soon to become active benevolence, and, 
that under his teaching. Fox was to leave behind, though 
never to recant, the erroneous opinions of his youth." (Yol. i. 
p. 378.) 

It is satisfactory to me to find there is not an incident or 
characteristic relied on, by any competent inquirers into 
the Junius mystery, as probably belonging to the conduct or 
idiosyncrasy of the real writer, which is not presented by 
"William Burke. According to Woodfall's Editor, Junius 
must have been " quick, irritable, and impetuous ; subject 
to political prejudices, and strong personal animosities ; but 
possessed of a high independent spirit ; honestly attached to 
the principles of the Constitution, and fearless and indefati- 
gable in maintaining them ; that he was strict in his moral 
conduct, and in his attention to public decorum ; an avowed 
member of the Established Church, (he would not otherwise 

* See Works, etc. of Burke. (Vol. i. p. 96.) 



116 DIVERS SMALL PROOFS. 

have been so Avarraly befriended by Dr. Markhara, afterwards 
Archbishop of York,) and, though acquainted with Englisli 
judicature, not a lawyer by profession.'' 

According to another commentator, he was an Irishman, 
or educated in Ireland, and must have been in France. 
According to Mr. Smith, the Editor of the '^Grenville Corres- 
pondence," he was a man having no special occupation, and 
able to give up his time to his epistolary labors, and the col- 
lection of information. He adds, that he was very conversant 
with the affairs of the Stock Exchange, in addition to his 
fulfillment of all the above-named points. 

Junius thus describes his own position in a private Letter 
to Wilkes, as precisely that of William Eurke. He declares 
himself to be ^^ a man who perhaps has more leisure to make 
reflections than you have, and who, though he stands clear 
of all business and intrigue, mixes sufficiently for the pur- 
poses of intelligence in the conversation of the world." 



Junius is stated by some other commentators to have 
been necessarily a kind-hearted, though a hot-tempered man. 
Of "William Burke's hot temper, instances enough trans- 
pired in his Parliamentary career, as we have seen. But I 
think the proofs are just as abundant of his kind and affec- 
tionate disposition. All Burke's correspondents who name 
him, do so in terms of cordial esteem and love, rarely 
bestowed on ill-natured men. Dr. Leland mentions him 
thus : '^ My most affectionate compliments to my dear Wil- 
liam, assure him, etc." again, ^^ I have the liveliest sense of 
yours and William's friendship." ^^ I thank you," writes 
Dr. Markham to William Burke himself, '^ for your affec- 
tionate letter," ^' ^ '' Adieu, my dear Burke, 
I am most affectionately yours," etc. 



DIVERS SMALL PROOFS. 117 

Sir George Macartney writes, ' ^ I am sure I know of no 
man more worthy of a seat than him who made so generous 
a sacrifice of his own pretensions, to the advantage of his 
friend. Adieu, dear Will I Believe me most sincerely and 
affectionately, Yours," etc. Lord Charlemont sends *'his 
affectionate compliments to Will." His society was sought 
for by Lord Verney, Lord Charlemont, Dowdeswell, etc., 
and though probably Mr. WilKam had no opinion of Garrick, 
Garrick was ready enough to seek his patronage for his 
friend, Mr. Aylward. 

To Eichard Shackleton Edmund Burke writes thus : — 
'^ Our friend. Will. Burke, who is indeed truly your friend, 
will make the party as agreeable to you as he can. He felt 
a great tenderness at the particular affectionate manner in 
which you mentioned him in your last letter." 

To my mind, far stronger evidence than all these letters put 
together, is afforded by little John, the son of Dr. Leland, 
after a visit from William Burke. Dr. Leland says in his 
next letter, '' We divide our affections most equitably 
among you ; only John, the little dog, doats on the remem- 
brance of Will, with particular fondness." (Correspondence, 
vol. i. p. 85.) People to whom children warmly attach 
themselves are always kind-hearted. 

Another proof of the amiability of William Burke's dispo- 
sition is afforded by Lord EitzwHliam, who says in a note in 
the Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 179 : — 

^' He " ("William Burke,) " accompanied Lord Cornwallis, by whom 
he was much beloved, in. most of his campaigns in that country." 
" From his agreeable manners and general information, his company 
was much sought after : " he adds at the same time — 

" Having rather a turn for expense, he neglected those opportunities 
of making a fortune, which his long employment in India afforded." 



118 DIVEKS SMALL PROOFS. 

This easy and good-natured manner, when in society, must 
have powerfully assisted in diverting suspicion from William 
Burke, of being the terrible Thersites. 



Mr. Peter Eurke mentions the following singular fact : — 
" Dyer* was very intimate with Mr. Burke and his family. When 
Dyer died in 1772, the Letters of Junius ceased ; but what was even 
more strange, was this fact, related by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of 
Dyer's executors. The moment Dyer was dead, Edmund Burke's 
cousin, WilUam Burke, went to the deceased's lodgings, and there 
seized and destroyed a large quantity of manuscript. Eeynolds happen- 
ing to come in, found the room covered with the papers, cut up into 
minutest fragments, there being no fire in the grate. Eeynolds 
expressed some surprise, and Mr. William Burke hurriedly explained 
that " the papers were of great importance to himself, and of none to 
anybody else." Mrs. Burke once admitted that she believed her hus- 
band knew the author of the Letters, but that he did not write them," 
(Public and Domestic Life of Edmund Burke, by Peter Burke, Esq., 
p. 68.) 

What were these mysteiious papers ? Did William Burke 
employ an amanuensis, and was it Dyer ? or more likely 
still, did Dyer, being in the secret, employ one for him, and 
were these papers so anxiously destroyed by William Burke, 
the remnants of the drafts of these famous Letters ? 

That Junius, be he who he might, could have written 
the volumes which passed from his into the hands of many 
printers, and could have uniformly maintained a hand- 
writing so clear, neat, quiet, and perfectly uniform,! and in a 
character so unlike whatever was his own as never to have led 

* Samuel Dyer, F.B.S. I should be glad to see his handwriting. 

t It was very peculiar. The tops of the letters are sharp and com- 
pressed : the lower parts are free, and very symmetrically formed para - 
bohc curves, or sweeps, whereby the distances are regularly preserved. 
The pen was often taken off in the middle of words. 



DIVEES SMALL TKOOFS. 119 

to detection, — lie being clearly a man of mark, — I for one, do 
not beKeve. If he was his own amanuensis, in the first place, 
he wrote a hand utterly dissimilar from his character, and 
unless there was no human being he could trust with his 
secret, surely exercised a very strange discretion. 



That Junius was ^^ the sole depository of his own secret,'* 
1 believe just as little. That he was capable of lying, is 
proved by his own request that Woodfall should tell a lie for 
him. That he did this, is incontestable : for it remains in 
black and white in the private Letter he wrote to "Woodfall, 
on the 10th of September, 1769. (Yol. i. p. 199.) :N'ow this 
Letter is the more remarkable as proof of my position, for it 
is prefaced by this admission : — '^ The truth is, there are 
people about me, whom I would wish not to contradict^ and 
who had rather see Junius in the papers ever so improperly, 
than not at all." He then suggests that Woodfall should 
announce that he had '^ some reason to suspect that the last 
Letter signed 'Junius,' was not written by the real Junius," 
and this he asked "Woodfall to do, who had no reason to 
suspect anything of the kind, bat who knew it to be Junius' s 
own Letter, 

The reason why Junius said he was the sole depository of 
his own secret, was to baffle and discourage inquiry. From the 
moment that bitter hostility assailed Eurke on the ground of 
the suspicion that he was Junius, it was obvious that Burke's 
interest, and the chances of advancement, alike for him and 
"William Eurke, were dashed to the ground, unless they 
could effectually avert it. !N"ow the author, be he who he 
might, was certain of being killed on discovery : the wrath 
against him was at length rabid, and on jSTovember 10th, 
1771, Junius writes to Woodfall in terror lest he should be 



120 DIVEES SMALL PROOFS. 

detected, declaring that he ^' should not survive the discover}^ 
three days/' that he is to change the direction of his letters, 
and *^ let no mortal know the alteration." The cause of this 
is obvious ; it was the very month in which Charles Towns- 
hend and the Bishop of Chester were pressing the suspicions 
of the town on both the Eurkes, and urging from Edmund 
the reluctant disclaimer he gave after a second demand from 
Townshend, and not then, '* till he had twice consulted his 
pillow." Why a man should twice consult his pillow, if 
he had not done what he wished to deny, it is not easy to say. 
If he were desirous of giving an evasive answer to half of the 
inquiry, it is easy enough ; and that was just what Edmund 
Barke did wish to do. Moreover, it is recorded by Mr. Peter 
Burke, that ^4t is certain that on one occasion Edmund Burke 
himself acknowledged to Sir Joshua Eeynolds, that he knew 
who was the writer of Junius's Letters." (Burke's Life of 
Burke, p. 68.) 

It is the greatest possible proof of moral cowardice to tell 
a lie. But under the circumstances in which the Burkes 
were placed, — their fortunes and their very lives depending 
on it, — what are the chances that they would be less likely 
than Sir Walter Scott to tell the same lie, when instead of 
calamities, fame and honor awaited his telling the truth ? If 
Scott denied that he was the author of '^"Waverley," when he 
was the author; a fortiori Burke might deny that he hnew the 
author of Junius, when he did know it. I am persuaded 
that the Burkes all knew it ; and that Dyer knew it also, and 
that he assisted, for he was a member of the same club, lived 
on terms of great intimacy with the Burkes, and as a scholar 
must have been most useful to William Burke in correcting 
the Irish-English, which both he and Edmund constantly 
perpetrated in their private letters, and of which some speci- 



PIVEKS SMALL PROOFS. 121 

mens occasionallj' appear even in the studied Letters of 
Junius. 

It was stated by Sir James Mackintosh to my informant, 
— a gentleman who was present at table with him — that 
^^he was convinced that Junius was the production of a clique 
though, possibly, Francis held the pen, but that he, Sir 
James, detected BurUsms in the style. ''^ 



It was said by Junius to Woodfall, in the Letter of 
N'ovember 10th, 1771, that he feared that if discovered, they 
would '^ attaint him by bill." This would apply to his 
status, though not to that of Francis. 



I have often thought that though William Burke (Junius) 
always wrote to Woodfall as a man of money means before 
his losses in the funds, he probably ultimately received aid 
from Woodfall (more than once offered.) Did he procure an 
advance on mortgage ? If so, it is possible that the fact of the 
gentleman named in the private Letter of Junius, January 
18th, 1772, (Yol. i. p. 245.) '^ transacting \hQ conveyancing 
part of our correspondence ; '' and that Woodfall' s subsequent 
adoption of a motto of his own in the ^ ^Advertiser," for 
Junius' s attention, '^ Die quihus in terrisj'^ — might have re- 
ferred to such money transactions, and not as generally 
supposed, to the carriage of letters, which was not customarily 
described as '^ conveyancing," or a ^^transaction." 



Most of the facts so soon known to Junius were easily 
within the knowledge of William Burke. For instance, his 
speedy information that Garrick had been to Eichmond, to 
let the King know that Junius would write no more. Why 
Garrick avows that he told his acquaintances, and William 



122 DIVEES SMALL PROOFS. 

Burke was one of them. It is singular that Junius, with 
his strong sympathies for ^Hhe brave Irish people/^ should 
have written so little about Ireland, and its numberless op- 
pressions by the very race of statesmen he was concerned in 
assailing. Edmund Burke explains this to the Bishop of 
Chester: — '^They (Eichard and William) know little or 
nothing of Irish history." (Correspondence, vol. i. p. 337.) 



There is not, I believe, in the whole of Junius, a man 
assailed of whom Edmund Burke thought well : and there 
are few of those he was known to condemn as actively hostile 
to his party, who are not assailed by Junius. 

Edmund Burke says to the Bishop of Chester : — 

'^ I attacked Lord Barrington : I did so, and let me add, 
I attacked Lord Weymouth as much as him ; and I attacked 
Lord Hillsborough as much as either, though on another 
ground. But I did this in a regular, sober, constitutional 
manner.'^ (Burke's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 306.) 

This shows that Burke himself was far from desiring to 
screen the proofs of the marked identity of his hostilities with 
those of Junius, however he may have shrunk from father- 
. ing his personalities.^ 

* Having been enabled to refer to the " Cavendish Debates," since 
Chapter XIII. went to press, I may here name that they afford no 
ground whatever for applying Burke's panegyric on Junius to the 
writer of a letter to "Almon," though they omit to insert it. It happens, 
however, that these Debates even more strongly represent Burke as 
palliating, if not approving, the Letter to the King. Speaking last 
of a libel, in the ''''North Briton^'' Burke is reported to have said: — 
" Compare those times with the present. What is it that has wrought so 
great a change in the temper and disposition of the people, that they 
now countenance the most audacious, the most wicked libels ? Will 



DIYEES SMALL PROOFS. 123 

As a proof of the extreme part which William Eurke took 
in the Opposition, I may mention the part taken by him in the 
contest of the House of Commons with the House of Lords, 
in April, 1771. He brought up the report of the Committee 
on the Lords sending down Bills by improper messengers, 
which was appointed to inquire into the precedents with 
respect to such messages. A motion having been then made 
to send the Bills back to the Lords, it was negatived ; Mr. 
Dyson (who is attacked by Junius,) then moved a milder 
message. To this, an amendment was moved to the effect 
that "the House could not proceed on the above message.'' 
This was lost by a majority of 105 to 55, William Burke 
being the first teller for the Yeas : which shows that he 
moved the amendment against Dyson. 



A letter apparently written by Junius, but bearing the 
initials " W. B." for signature, is inserted as a note by 
Woodfall's Editor, at page 291, vol. ii. It is appended to a 
letter of Home, dated 31st of July, 1771, and explains a 
reference to a note in "Wilkes's Clarendon. It bears date 
after Home's letter in the '' Advertiser." It is introduced by 
the Editor abruptly, and without any other comment upon 

any one compare the matter of that libel, [meaning the North Briton's] 
^\rLth the Letter to the King ? Sir, when I heard it first, [it seems to 
have been read to him,] my blood ran chill and cold, iiotfrom the false- 
ness of the facts ^ but from the boldness and audacity of the writer. This 
hbel has been produced in a court of justice ; but such was the feeling of 
the Jury when it came before thein, that they refused to the Attorney 
General, the laws, they refused to the King^ any justice. They thought 
that more mischief would be occasioned by finding that publication a 
libel, than from the assertions it contained'' (Cavendish Debates, 
November 27th, 1770, vol. ii. p. 106.) 



124 DIVEHS SMALL PROOFS. 

it than this, — " The Letter is short, [meaning this one in 
which Home is charged with stealing his idea from Wilkes,] 
and as it also explains a subsequent fact, it ought not to 
be omitted." 

The style is exactly that of Junius in his undress, and 
adopted by him as Philo-Junius. Here are the neat, idio- 
matic expressions, and racy contrast of images : — 

'* Mr. Home when he invents, should be careful not to 
give absurd fictions. I am acquainted both with Mr. Wilkes, 
and Mr. Home. It is amusing to observe how the parson 
has, on a variety of occasions, purloined from the alderman!'^ 
(WoodfalFs Junius, vol. ii. p. 292.) 



In ^' litotes and Queries," vol. ix. p. 74, (new series), 
January 28th, 1854, ''Mr. Metcalf, of Delhi, says that he 
thinks he possesses the 8vo. copy of Junius, 'vellum bound 
in gilt,' Junius, 1772, 2 vols., which Junius ordered of 
Woodfall." 

" This copy (he says in an interesting letter) has been in the family 
library for about sixty years. I imagine it must have been pur- 
chased by my grandfather, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, after his arrival 
from India, about 1788, this is merely a conjecture, in default of any 
more probable theory. Of the authenticity of this copy I have no 
doubt : I mean that it is now in the same condition as when it first 
issued from the bookseller. The binding is evidently of an old date, 
The gilding is peculiar, and the books correspond exactly with the 
order of Junius as given to Woodfall ; and although neatly bound, are as 
Woodfall mentions in No. LXIV. not highly finished. It is quite possible 
that my grandfather possessed this copy some years before his return 
from India." 

My readers will not have forgotten that William Burke 
was twice in India ; the second time, with Lord Comwallis, 




XIX. 

THE CASE FOE FEAJNTIS AIS^D OTHERS. 

^NE of the favorite reliances of those who support the 
belief that Francis was Junius, is that of the letter of 
Lady Francis published and apparently believed in by 
Lord Campbell, in his Life of Loughborough. '^ Her 
Ladyship begins with a very just doubt whether she 
^^has a right to betray what Sir Philip never would 
have confessed, and which she could only have obtained 
the conviction of from his confidence in her discretion 
w^hich made him lay aside with her that guard over himself, 
etc." If this were so, he seems by her own showing to have 
very much misplaced his confidence : the more so since her 
Ladyship ^'believes that the secret of his attachment and 
marriage (to her) so late in life " was that ^^ like the wife (!) 
of Midas he wanted some one to whisper his secret to, and I 
was his reedy The simile is apt. The secret and its fate are 
strikingly alike : Lord Campbell enacting the zephyrs. It is 
fortunate however for the reputation of the husband, that 
he never did confide the secret to her which this discreet wife 
is so anxious to divulge. For she presently admits that 
*^ though she never had a shadow of a doubt," etc. ^^ he 
never avowed himself, more than saying he knew what my 
opinion was, and never contradicting it." Sir Francis was a 
polite husband. 

* Lives of the Chancellors, vol. viii. p. 211. Fourth Edition. 



126 THE CASE EOR FRANCIS AND OTHERS. 

Lady Francis's reasons for her suspicions seem to consist 
in ^^his having told her circumstances that none but Junius 
could know." Seeing that if William Burke were he, and 
that William and Francis were friends,^ this is not wonder- 
ful. She, however, lets it escape her, that on Francis being 
asked whether he thought Burhe was the writer, Francis 
replied, '^ Faith very likely, '^ and he then explained how 
Burke's answer to the same inquiry was an evasion. She also 
omits to state that Francis invariably and indignantly denied 
the authorship every time it was mentioned in his presence : 
and I have somewhere read that Woodfall also denied that 
Francis could be the author. 

Seeing that some of the men abused by Junius were, like 
Chatham, the best fiiends of Francis, it is strange that 
any one having a regard for his memory, should seek to 
prove his title to literary fame, acquired, if at all, by acts of 
indelible baseness to his benefactors. Of Lord Chatham, his 
earliest patron, Francis, in 1787, says : — ^^ How warmly I 
was attached to his person, and how grateful I have been to 
his memory, they who know me, know.'^ 

Of Lord Chatham, Junius says at the very time (1767) 
when Lord Chatham was befriending Francis, — ^^ To Lord 
Chatham we owe the greatest part of our national debt. • . . 
... I cannot bear to see so much incense offered to an idol 
who so little deserves it." Again, ^' the Earl of Chatham and 
his miserable understrappers deserve nothing but contempt." 
And again, in 1768, he says, ^^ His infirmities have forced 
him into a retirement, where he is ready to suffer, with a 
sullen submission, every insult and disgrace that can be 
heaped upon a miserable, decrepit, worn-out old man." 

* When WilHam Burke went to India, it was to Francis that he went 
for aid, and Francis received him into his house. 



THE CASK FOR FRANCIS AND OTHERS. 127 

To Welbore Ellis, Francis avowedly owed his place in the 
War Office ; and to Calcraft, after his death, a legacy of 
£1000, and an annuity to Mrs. Francis. Junius char- 
acterised one as ^' That little mannikin Ellis." '' The most 
contemptible little piece of machinery in the whole king- 
dom.'' ^'Welbore Ellis, what say you? Speak out, 
Giildrig ! " (Junius, May 28th, 1771.) 

Of Calcraft he speaks thus — ^' What though he riots in 
the plunder of the army, and has only determined to be a 
patriot when he could not be a Peer." 

!N"ow, Junius wrote this on the 5th of Oct. 1771, whilst 
Francis was still at the War Office, which he did not leave 
until March 20th, 1772, and whilst Calcraft was endeavour- 
ing to get Francis a far higher appointment, as he well 
knew at the time ; and but a very few months before he 
settled on Francis and his first wife a munificent bequest. 

At the time that the bitterest of the attacks of Junius 
were levelled at the benefactors of Francis, he was suffering 
under no sort of grievance, real or imagined. It was not 
till Junius had almost ceased to write — in 1772 — that he 
was wronged at all. Up to then he held a very lucrative 
clerkship in the War Office ; and not till March 23rd, in that 
year, is it that Junius says, in one of the latest of his 
Letters: — ^^I think that the public has a right to call on 
Mr. D'Oyley and Mr. Francis to declare their reasons for 
quitting the War Office. Men of their unblemished charac- 
ter do not resign lucrative employments without some suffi- 
cient reasons." (Woodfall's Junius, iii. 445.) 

Sir Philip always passed for a vain man, but I never 
heard proof of baseness in him capable of that causeless malice 
against his best friends, of which his widow assures us. 



128 THE CASE FOR FRANCIS AND OTHERS. 

Here I should have left the matter, referring the unsa- 
tisfied reader to the demolition of the Franciscan case in the 
^^ Quarterly Eeview'' of Dec. 1851, vol. xc; and to the able 
articles in the '^Athenaeum'' published shortly afterwards ; but 
the great names and authority of Lords Mahon and Macaulay 
deter me from ignoring their opinions, which I regret to 
find, support the case against Francis. 

Lord Macaulay says, in a letter to Mr. Murray, dated Jan. 
3rd, 1852:— 

'^ It seems to me too that one haK of the arguments of the Reviewer 
is answered by the other half. First, we are told that Francis did not 
write the Letters, because it would have been singularly infamous in 
him to write them. Then, we are told that he did not write them 
because he did not own them. Surely this reasoning does not hang 
well together. Is it strange that a very proud man should not confess 
what would disgrace him } I have always believed that Francis kept 
silence because he was well known to have received great benefits fi:om 
persons whom he had, as JtmiuSj or as Veteran, abused with great 
mahgnity." 

The advocates of the case against Francis who happen 
to hold both positions are no doubt impaled on one or the 
other of the horns of this dilemma. Eut how does Lord 
Macaulay answer the fijst of these assertions, namely that 
Francis, not being base, was incapable of singular baseness ? 
He simply affirms his belief that he was thus base. And he 
asserts also that the case rests '^on coincidences such as would 
be sufficient to convict a murderer." I confess I am of a 
different opinion, and having read them all, am confident that 
no jury could safely convict on them for petty larceny. I 
will instance one or two as examples. " Junius shows an 
intimate knowledge of the Luttrell family. Francis, up to 
ten years of age, lived near LuttreU town.'^ I have thought 
it too insignificant a fact to mention the long residence of 



THE CASE FOR FRANCIS AND OTHERS. 129 

Burke in the same county. *^ Francis went to India with a 
good appointmen t, soon after Junius ceased to write . " ^ ' Junius 
must have been unstable and impetuous : Sir Philip Francis 
gave some reason to believe he possessed a kindred spirit.'' 
'^ The man who threw a Junius into Woodfall's was tall and 
thin, so was Francis.'' '^ Francis used many expressions which 
Junius used." So he did after Junius had printed them, and 
so did many others. ^^He wrote a handwriting veiy like 
Junius' s." General Lee wrote one still more like, and 
so can any draughtsman who tries to imitate it. ^^ Francis, 
being (a clerk) in a public office, had means of official in- 
formation." !N"ot the tenth part of the various means William 
Eurke possessed. ^^ He had, probably, antipathies against 
some of the people Junius abused." IN'othing approaching 
to them. ** Francis was absent from England from May, 1 772, 
to about January, 1773, whilst Junius was silent and is pre- 
sumed to have disappeared. Francis was also going to India 
when the motto was used, Die quihus in terris, which might 
indicate these travels, etc., etc." The following is perhaps 
one of the most amusing of any of these pieces of ^'evidence." 
It is from * ' Junius Identified. ' ' Francis, Taylor says, had been 
making preparations for his journey, or perhaps visiting his 
father at £ath, ''These conjectures," he adds, ''receive 
countenance from the fact that Junius was silent from the 
time he informed us of the expulsion of Sir Philip Francis, 
(March 23rd,) until the 5th of May, and on the 12th of that 
month Junius says he has "just returned from a certain part 
of Berlcshire.^^ The evidence here is rather too minute for 
ordinary perception. If there be any, I presume that as 
"William Burke was frequently at Beaconsfield, which is 
near to Berkshire, while Bath is not, it makes more in favor 
of the case for William Burke, than Sir Philip. 



1,30 THE CASE FOR FRANCIS AND OTHERS. 

It is imprudent in the advocates of the Francis claim to 
refer us to the chronology of the case. The Quarterly Ee- 
viewer thus conclusively sums up the facts under that head : — 

" When Francis was employed and grateful, Junius was most ener- 
getic in his attempts to damage the Government ; when Francis was 
idle and discontented, Junius was silent." 

Lord Mahon, after naming the sparing of Lord Holland and 
Charles Fox by Junius, says that by no other theory than 
that of the authorship of Francis, is the *^ explanation '' of 
this '^ anomaly,'' ^^ so clear and plain," Lord Holland having 
been the early patron, both of his father and himself." 
(Mahon's History, vol. v. p. xxxiv.) This argument might 
avail, were it not evident that if Francis were Junius, he 
had no scruple in attacking his greatest benefactors : that 
being so, it has no weight whatever. 

The point made against Francis, that he must have known 
that Draper took no oath when he received his pension is, 
I admit, disposed of by Lord Macaulay's remark that 
Francis need not have known it, since it was omitted only 
in the case of Irish pensions. As regards William Burke, 
it was, however, a still more natural mistake, as he was in 
no War Office. 

This leads me, however, to mention a point which is 
strong against the claim for Francis, and in favor of that for 
WiUiam Burke. I am indebted for it to the Quarterly 
Reviewer. 

" Mr. Taylor, in the course of his researches, discovered the follow- 
ing paragraph in the '■ PubHc Advertiser ' of January 10th, 1772, which 
he correctly attributes to the pen of Junius. " 

This passage occurs in it : — 

" The Secretary's place, being therefore a mere clerkship of four 
hundred pounds a year, could neither in advantage nor honor be worth 
holding to a man in the station and circumstances of a gentleman." 



THE CASE FOK FRANCIS AND OJHEES. 131 

Francis was a vaiu man, and would never have thus 
spoken of an office to which he aspired, and which was 
above that which he held and called ^' a place of great 
trust/ ^ William Burke, on the contrary, having been a 
Minister of State, was just in the position to regard all 
clerkships de haut en has. 

His Lordship also cites similarities of phrase between 
Junius and the speech of Lord Chatham, which Francis 
reported. But how does this afford the least atom of proof 
that Francis was Junius ? May not Lord Chatham have 
used the terms of Junius in expressing the same feelings ? 
And may not Francis have copied them, whether Chatham 
used them or not?^ Of this there is some evidence : namely, 
that if the words referred to, but not cited, by Lord Mahon 
were apt and emphatic, they were not Francis's. Of this I 
will give some degree of proof in the next chapter. 

When Francis was a youth of twenty there is strong 
presumptive evidence that Junius was exercising the full vigor 
of his remarkably virile powers as a writer. ^^ The letter 
to an Honorable Brigadier General," published in 1760, is 
very evidently by the same hand, as Mr. jST. W. Simons, who 
discovered and edited it in 1841, satisfactorily shows. In 

* I used the term " the dignity of labor" about six years ago at a 
Birmingham Conference ; (deriving it from that of " dignity of revenge " 
used by Junius,) and as far as I know for the first time. It has 
been used by a thousand people since. Supposing I had used it 
anonymously, would such adoption of it by others, or of fifty such 
pubHshed expressions of mine, go to prove any of these people to be me ? 

I cannot admit that if Francis did leave " Junius Identified" sealed up 
and directed to his wife in a bureau, it was either necessarily intended 
as a "posthumous present," or any proof that he wrote Junius if it were. 
It is quite possible that some one else placed it there. 



132 THE CASE FOR ERAXCIS A^D OTHERS. 

his Letters, Junius speaks of himself more than once as 
a man of ^'long experience of the world:" nor is there 
wanting ample proof that he was such : and therefore very 
greatly senior to Francis. 

It is quite impossible that Francis, as a young clerk, had 
the acquaintances or sources of information which Junius 
required, and William Burke had in abundance. [N'either did 
any one dream of imputing the authorship to him till long 
after the Letters had ceased. Let it not, moreover, be for- 
gotten that Junius had declared his intention of ceasing to 
write before he did so, and some months before Francis 
quitted the "War Office. There was therefore no connection 
whatever between those events. 

Thus it is amply proved that Francis had neither the 
experience, the associates, the information, nor the motives of 
Junius ; all of which are essential to the proof of the author- 
ship ; and I will presently endeavour to show that neither 
had he the requisite capacity. 

Lord Lyttelton had, perhaps, the ability to write Junius : 
but he had no sufficiently powerful inducement, or passionate 
motive, to sustain so varied and intense a labor for five long 
years. The case for, or against ''" him, in the *' Quarterly 
Review," though highly ingenious, has been amply confuted 
in the '^ Athenaeum." The claim for Lord Temple has, if 
possible, all the weakness of all the other cases, without their 
adherents. Few people could read Mr. Smith's elaborate 
essay in its favor, prefixed to the third volume of the 
*' Grenville Correspondence," which he ably edited, without 
arriving, I think, at that conclusion. IN'o man of Lord Tem- 

* These are synonymous terms in this application of them, as Lord 
Macaulay also held. 



THE CASE FOR FPwANCIS AXD OTHLRS. 133 

pie's status and temperament would have made the war 
Junius did, on clerks, and people like Bradshaw ; or, if he 
did, would he have descended to the same details about them 
and their relatives. That Lord George Sackville should 
taunt himself with that charge of cowardice which was the 
sting of his life, or that Home should blacken himself with 
the charge of apostasy, and declare that his merits were 
mentioned only to ^' aggravate his guilt," and as being '* inca- 
pable of the liberal resentment of a gentleman," is incredible. 
^or are clergymen prone, whether it be true of them or not, to 
proclaim themselves to the world as possessed of '^the vindic- 
tive malice of monks, brooding over the infirmities of their 
friends." Home had no access to the facts or the official 
peculiarities known to William Burke. 

Seeing the strange excesses of unlikelihood over which the 
investigators of the Junius mystery have usually driven 
headlong, — blind to every fact and probability lying around 
them, — one ceases to wonder at the ninety years' failure to 
discover him.^'' 

The other claimants are well disposed of by AVoodfall's 
Editor and the ^^ Athenaeum." 



* This failui'e is in some degi^ee attributable to an undue weight 
being given to similarities of handwriting. Mr. William Woodfall, in 
a letter dated August 9th, 1799, to the "European Magazine" for that 
month, says : — '' I beheve I may safely assert that every one of Junius' s 
Letters was shown to me in manuscript by my brother previous to 
publication, and no one of them ever bore tlie appearance of being vjritten 
in a disguised handr There is scarcely a doubt that Junius employed 
an amanuensis. Whenever I can obtain a sight of a certain packet 
of Burke Correspondence, I may throw light on this. 



XX. 



STYLE OF JUOTUS, AND CONCLUSIOJS-. 




) OWEVER strongly bits of sentences or hosts of words 
used by other writers, may coincide with some used 
by Junius, I confess, that except in Burke's own 
writings, and some few of his speeches, I have failed, 
in the whole of my reading, to find any style like 
his. The attempts made to hold up that of Erancis 
as his, are sufficiently curious to make it worth while to give 
them a little notice, as illustrations of the universal truth 
of Tristram Shandy's doctrine, touching hypotheses.^ 

I will now place some of the best passages from Erancis, 
in juxtaposition with a few from Junius, in order to afibrd 
a ready means of arriving at a judgment. As masters of 
style have declared their conviction that Erancis wrote 
Junius, it is not for me to say that the compositions of the 
former are unworthy of being compared with the latter, and 
that the contrast is ludicrous; but I may, I hope, be permitted 
to criticise the performances of Erancis. 



* " It is in the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has con- 
ceived it, that it assimilates everything to itself as proper nourishment : 
and from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the 
stronger by everything you see, hear, read, or understand. This is of 
great use/' 



STYLE OP JUNIUS, AN I) CONCLUSION. 



135 



JUNIUS. 

'' The reputation of these papers 
is au honorable pledge for my at- 
tachment to the people." * * 

" If an honest, and, I may truly 
affirm, a laborious zeal for the public 
service, has given me any weight 
in your esteem, let me exhort and 
conjure you, never to suffer an 
invasion of your political constitu- 
tion, however minute," etc. 

" On this side, then, which ever 
way you turn your eyes, you see 
nothing but perplexity and distress. 
You may determine to support the 
very Ministry who have reduced 
your affairs to this deplorable situ- 
ation," etc. 

*"I am weary of attacking a set 
of brutes, whose writings are too 
dull to furnish me even with the 
materials of contention, and whose 
measures are too gross and direct to 
be the subject of argument, or to 
require illustration." 

This feeble twaddle of Francis is put forth by Mr. 
Taylor, the author of '^ Junius Identified/^ as a picked spe- 
cimen of the similarity between Junius and Prancis. 

In the whole of Junius, there is not such a misjoinder of 
adjectives as *' determined'' and '^ inveterate/' the second 



FRAXCIS. 

" I believe no man living will 
seriously attribute to me the char- 
acter of a determined mid inveterate 
adversary of the British nation. It 
is well kno>vn to every man in 
India, that if Mr. "Wheler's advice 
and mine, for these three years 
past had been regarded, or, if our 
unremitted efforts had availed any- 
thing, this Government would not 
have bee7i in the distressing situa- 
tion to which it is reduced by a 
series of other measures^ adopted and 
pursued in opposition to our sen- 
timents. Eut I have done with 
controversy. I shall give the 
Board no further trouble on this 
question, nor perhaps on any other." 
(From Minute of Sir P. Francis, on 
India.) 



* This paragraph only is selected by Mr. Taylor. I have chosen 
the others as expressing, in some measure, similar ideas : but as Junius 
was not in the habit of praising himself, I have found none strictly 
parallel. Compare the extreme neatness and pungency of his ex- 
pressions with the floundering verbiage of poor Sir Francis. 



136 STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION. 

rendering the first wholly needless. Such an unwieldy awk- 
ward sentence as that which follows, would surely disgrace 
a boy in the second form at a good grammar school. Mark 
also the use of the past tense, '* have been," instead of ** be " 
in the clause beginning, *'this Government.'' Imagine 
Junius, moreover, terminating a long sentence where its 
point and brilliance always culminate, with such wretched 
slip-slop as a ^^ distressing situation to which it is reduced 
by a series of other measures adopted and pursued in opposi- 
tion to our sentiments. ^^ One of the proofs on which this 
claimant for Francis relies, consists in Prancis having used 
the words, '^ hut I have done with controversy, and I shall 
give the Board no further trouhle on this question, nor per- 
haps, on any other. 

And this he thinks strilcingly similar with the conclusion 
in Jnnius's private Letter ! ^' I am weary," etc. The words 
*' deplorable situation," and '^ distressing situation," are 
similar also : Francis having read them over and over again, 
has not improbably borrowed this, and much more from 
Junius : but the borrowings remind one sadly of ^sop's daw. 
Comment on such similarities as these, by way of proof, is 
quite needless. 

The best sentence Francis is known to have ever written, 
is ungrammatical. It is this : — 

"The loss of a single life in a popular tumult, excites individual ten- 
derness, and pity. No tears are shed for nations. When the provinces 
are scourged to the bone by a mercenary and merciless military power, 
and every drop of its blood and substance extorted from it by the edicts 
of a royal council, the case seems very tolerable to those who are not 
involved in it." 

"What is the antecedent to the word ^^ its ?" Gram- 
matically, '^ the military power : " but he does not mean 



STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION. 137 

that, but the blood and treasure of the provinces. Junius 
never made these blunders. See also the ponderous platitudes 
in the sequel : — 

*' When thousands after thousands are dragooned out of their coun- 
try for the sake of their religion, [what does he mean by persecuting a 
religion for the sake of it ?] or sent to row in the galleys for selling salt 
against law, — when the liberty of every individual is at the mercy of 
every prostitute, pimp, or parasite, that has access to the hand of power, 
or to any of its basest substitutes, — my mind, I own, is not at once pre- 
pared to he satisfied with gentle palliatives for such disorders. Wliy? 
Because, you say, it is not statural that it should J' 

Francis had frequent recourse to the puerile trick of 
alliterative s, a weakness to Vv"liich Junius rarely, if ever, 
descended. But what shall vre say of the vapid tameness and 
weakness of the end of each sentence ? Francis seems to 
exhaust his small stock of strength at the beginning, and fall 
helplessly into conclusions both lame and impotent. Ob- 
serve the remarkable converse in Junius. It is a character- 
istic of his style to give the utmost force to the climax. 
You never gather a notion of the wonderful power of his 
sentences till you arrive at the last words. Here are instances 
culled as they came : — 

— " Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of 
danger, or even the sacred shield of cowardice, should protect him. I 
would pursue him through life, and try the last exertion of my abilities 
to preserve the perishable infamy of his name, and make it immortal." 

— " The Praetorian bands, enervated and debauched as they were, had 
still strength enough to awe the Eoman populace ; but when the distant 
legions took the alarm, they marched to Eome, and gave away the empire.'* 

— " Good men can hardly believe the fact. Wise men are unable to 
account for it. Religious men find exercise for their faith, and make it 
the last effort of their piety, not to repine against Providence." 

— " Good faith and folly have so long been received as synonymous 
terms, that the reverse of the proposition has grown into credit, and 
every villain fancies himself a man of abilities." 



138 STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION. 

— " That he is the king of a free people, is indeed his gi'catest glory. 
That he may long continue the king of a free people, is a second wish 
that animates my heart. The first is, that the people may be free/' 

The calm language used, the sole reliance on the intrinsic 
strength of the thoughts, and their admirable arrangement, 
constitute a feature in the style of Junius, which it is 
scarcely too much to call inimitable. 

Compare it with the clatter of words in the sentence used 
even by Lord Temple, whom Mr. Smith declares to have been 
Junius ! Here are passages he selects to prove it for their 
alleged similarity of style : — 

Lord Temple says : — 

*' And when the obstinacy of unhappy Princes, enslaved with (sic) 
the notions of arbitrary power, which they called prerogative, left no 
other option but to submit to the usurpation of the Crown, or to fight, 
they drew their swords^ and Heaven to ivhich they appealed^ propitious to 
English liberty, justified their cause and crowned it with success." 

See how simply Junius puts this : — 

" My Lord, you should not encourage these appeals to Keaven. The 
pious prince, from whom you are supposed to descend, made such fre- 
quent use of them in his pubHc declarations, that, at last, .the people 
also found it necessary to appeal to Heaven in their turn/' (Junius, 
vol. i. p. 458.) 

Junius was never verbose or magniloquent : no writer who 
was, could have so completely purified his style as to write 
these Letters. These traits are unalterable characteristics, — 
literary types, by which men are easily distinguished. As a 
snob is known by superlatives in dress, so is a bad writer by 
big words. They who can write effectually, write quietly ; 
and never indulge in noisy sentences. 

William Burke has left, as far as I can yet ascertain, 
scarcely any avowed writings behind him. Having been 
known as a great writer in his time, as I have already shown, 



STYLE OF JUNIUS, AXD CONCLUSION. 1;3() 

(p. 6.) and of ^' keen satires,^^ it is of itself some evidence 
of his authorship of Junius, that he should have destroyed 
the means of identifying him by the style of his satire. Is 
there any other writer ^' so well qualified to wield his pen," as 
Prior records, — of such 'ingenuity and sharpness" in ''party 
papers," according to Walpole, — and of such ''great accom- 
plishments," as Sir Denis Le Marchant testifies, — who has 
left nothing behind him ?^' If his power of writing " party 
papers " satirically and powerfully be thus attested, I have 
only to show that he could also write with that remarkable 
plainness and precision of language,! which pervade the 
Letters of Junius. I extract the following from his few 
official documents left at the State Paper Office : — 

In a letter to Mr. Barnaby, our Minister at Eerne, dated 
the 16th of December, 1766, William Burke begins tlius : — 

" I should have answered your letter sooner but that I waited for 
the result of the enquiries General Conway ordered to be made on the 
points contained in your Memorial, and I am now to acquaint you that 
on the strictest search it is found that it has been an invariable rule never 
to give presents to Ministers who are ordered to depart without taking a 
formal leave, and as it appears by Lord Harrington's to you of the 30th 
June, 1741, that you was (sic) directed to do so, the General thinks he 
cannot make a demand of this sort in your favor." 

In another letter dated "Park Place, 22d. Apiil, 1766," 
he writes thus to Samuel Garbett, Esq. of Birmingham : — 

" General Conway received your letter as I had others, relative to the 
elopement of the Manufacturers," J etc. " I take the hberty of advising 

* Almost the only rehc is, his Translation of Brissot's Address in 
Burke's Works, which affords no evidence whatever of style. 

t The errors are such as Burke and the best writers of the time 
commonly made, and from which Junius is no^vise free. 

X They were supposed by Mr. Garbett to have gone to Sweden. 



140 STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION. 

you to address yourself on these occasions to my friend Mr. Stone- 
hewer : he is a gentleman of great worth, extreme good understanding, 
and of the politest manners, so that you may always depend on having 
any business you may commit to him done to your satisfaction : and the 
attention the Duke of Grafton has already given to all the instances 
he has been made acquainted with of the runaway Manufacturers, is 
an assurance that he thinks that an aiFair not to be slighted." 

In many of the prominent features of Eurke's style there 
is that similarity to Junius which might be expected from 
the long habit of literary association, which had sub- 
sisted between himself and his cousin, — working in close 
companionship, as Burke's description of their life at Mon- 
mouth and Turlaine, shows they did. How much or how 
little Burke might have done in the way of revision or 
emendation it is impossible to say; but that he abstained 
wholly from both is in the highest degree improbable. There 
are in the frequent and peculiar use of similes a very strong 
resemblance between Burke and Junius. The power of in- 
vective possessed by each — the peculiar use and frequent 
recurrence of thesis and antithesis — and the quiet strength 
of the climax which crowns each sentence in Junius are all 
remarkably observable in the following magnificent passage 
in Burke's Letter to a noble Lord, when attacked by the then 
Duke of Bedford, because of his pension, while deeply- 
afflicted by the loss of his son Eichard : — 

"The Revolution (of France) seems to have extended even to the 
constitution of the mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that 
it resembles what Lord Yerulam says of the operations of nature : it 
was perfect, not only in its elements and princip les, but in all its mem- 
bers and its organs from the very beginning. The moral scheme of 
France furnishes the only pattern ever known, which, they who admire, 
will instantly resemble. It is, indeed, an inexhaustible repertory of one 
kind of examples. In my wretched condition, though hardly to be 
classed T\dth the living, I am not safe from them. They have tigers 



STYLE OF JUNIUS, AND CONCLUSION. 141 

to fall upon animated strength. They have h3'enas to prey upon car- 
cases. The national menagerie is collected by the first physiologists 
of the time ; and it is defective in no description of savage nature. * * 

They have so determined a hatred to all privileged orders, that they 
deny even to the departed the sad immunities of the grave. They are 
not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys to their 
malice; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to assassinate the 
living." * * * 

" In one thing, I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his attack 
upon me, and my mortuary pension. He cannot readily comprehend 
the transaction he condemns. What I have obtained was the finiit of 
no bargain ; the production of no intrigue ; the result of no compro- 
mise, the effect of no solicitation. The first suggestion of it never 
came from me, mediately or immediately, to His Majesty, or any of 
his Ministers. It was long known that the instant my engagements 
would permit it, and before the heaviest of all calamities had for ever 
condemned me to obscurity and sorrow, I had resolved on a total 
retreat. I had executed that design. I was entirely out of the way 
of serving or of hurting any statesman, or any party, when the Minis- 
ters so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spontaneous 
bounty of the Crown. Both, descriptions have acted as became them. 
"WTien I could no longer serve them, the Ministers have considered my 
situation. When I could no longer hurt them, tbe revolutionists have 
trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal to the man- 
ner in which the benefit was conferred. It came to me indeed, at a 
time of life, and in a state of mind and body, in which no circumstance 
of fortune could afford me real pleasure. But this was no fault in the 
royal donor, or in his Ministers, who were pleased, in acknowledging 
the merits of an invalid servant of the public, to assuage the sorrows of 
a desolate old man." 

N'otwithstanding Burke's faults, it is impossible to reflect 
on his disinterested career, his devotion to the best interests 
of his country, and his unswerving fidelity to that statesman 
who united the highest integrity with the purest aims, with- 
out an esteem equal to the admiration which Burke's vast 
intellect has ever commanded. I do not believe that he 



142 STYLK OF JII^^IUS, AND CONCLUSION. 

wrote Junius : but I rejoice in the conviction that his relative 
did. To him, none of the basenesses attach, which the 
authorship would have fixed on most other men. Weither 
do I regret that the honor of this renowned literary achieve- 
ment and resolute resistance to political despotism and the 
worst arts of bad government is due to Ikeland — thus adding 
another of the laurels of civil patriotism, to the glorious 
trophies of her military fame. 

I hope that I have now shown that William Eurke had 
the various capacities, the peculiar information, and the 
personal motives which could alone have empowered and 
incited the author of Junius. 

I have shown that he united the warmth, alike of animos- 
ity and affection, which Junius is admitted to have possessed. 
It has been proved that William Eurke was acquainted 
with the routine and proceedings of official life, and that he 
kept up when out of office such remarkable intercourse with 
people still in office, that it was greatly through him, that 
not only Eurke, but Lord Eockingham, was informed of their 
manoeuvres. When GrenviUe's private secretary gathers 
information from him, he relates it ^^ as above the common 
level of discourse." I have shown that he was in a rank of 
society, and esteemed in it, "^ fully equivalent to the sources 
of information possessed by Junius ; and yet of a grade, asso- 
ciations, and habits, not too high to admit of his ready access 
to the gossip which Junius too frequently retailed. f 

I have shown not only how faithfully the Letters of Junius 
did the work of Eurke, and how precisely their rancour 
against each individual in office tallied with the antipathies 
of the struggling statesman — but how, where it stooped to 

* His portrait is in the gallery at Mnton. 
t He was also constantly in the Houses of Parliament. 



STYLE OF JUNIUS, AXD CONCLUSION. 14 S 

lower prey, the victims, like Bradshaw, were the especial 
objects of >Yilliain Burke's dislike, and the very men who 
filled the offices he craved to have. 

It has appeared how Junius' s desire to oust the whole 
Ministry, and reinstate the friends of AVilliam Burke in 
power, grew in vehemence as William Burke's fortunes 
waned, and office became less his political ambition, than a 
pecuniary necessity. It has been shown that the tendencies 
of Junius were good : that his exclamation to Woodfall, — 
^^ I affirm before God, I never knew a rogue who was not 
unhappy," — spoke the genius of his mind; and that William 
Burke was a man of virtuous impulses, generous in sympa- 
thy and kind of heart ; so that they who knew him best, 
loved him best. 

I have now concluded my task. If I have not solved the 
long-lived mystery, I am pretty sure that no one else has, 
and there is no discredit in my failure : while there has 
been, to me, at least, much profit and instruction in the 
attempt. Though it may be slighted by some, and con- 
demned by others, I would fain hope, that by many, I shall 
be thought warranted in believing that, at least, there was 
*^ a case for the Jury ; " and I shall be more than satisfied 
if that Jury thinks it worthy of a ^^ patient consideration." 

If I am found to have succeeded, I claim small merit 
for success. I have given to the work little other labor than 
that of a journeyman carpenter. I have but joined and dove- 
tailed my materials. These lay around me in heaps, 
perplexingly abundant : and though many that came to 
hand were rejected as useless, none as being cross-grained, 
or adverse to my object. I think, that to this fact, more 
than any other, I attribute my conviction that I have hit 



144 STYLE OF JU^sIUS, AXD CONCLUSION. 

upon the right man; and that the more deeply abler 
inquirers follow in my track, the more will it appear to be 
the true one. 

I cannot close this little book without expressing my cor- 
dial thanks to Peter Burke, Esq., Alfred Cox, Esq., the Rev. 
John Emeris, James Erancillon, Esq., J. Garrard, Esq., the 
Eev. C. Hardwicke, the Rev. Dr. Maitland, Sir Stafford 
l^orthcote, Mr. Secretary Waddington, Sir Erancis Pal- 
grave, the Rev. J. G. Rowlatt, W. ]^. Sainsbury, Esq., 
and Lord Lyttelton, for their kind aid, afforded none the less 
willingly because all, except the last, were unaware of the 
object of my inquiry. 




GLOUCESTER: 
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